Moby Dick

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evince their ability at any time to take it alongside, as well as their
intention so to do.

These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen
themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks--the
Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True, among the more upright and
honourable whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases,
where it would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim
possession of a whale previously chased or killed by another party. But
others are by no means so scrupulous.

Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover litigated
in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a hard chase of
a whale in the Northern seas; and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had
succeeded in harpooning the fish; they were at last, through peril of
their lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but their boat
itself. Ultimately the defendants (the crew of another ship) came up