Page 376 - moby-dick

Chapter 54

The Town-Ho’s Story.

(AS TOLD AT THE GOLDEN INN)
The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round
about there, is much like some noted four corners of a great
highway, where you meet more travellers than in any other
part.
It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another
homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encoun-
tered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In
the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby
Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was
now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho’s
story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale
a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so
called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake
some men. This latter circumstance, with its own particu-
lar accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret
part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the
ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of
the story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho him-
self. It was the private property of three confederate white
seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated
it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy, but the