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,10 was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby d**k. 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
