Instead of acting as a whale was supposed to—as a creature “never before suspected of premeditated violence, and proverbial for its inoffensiveness”—this big bull had been possessed by what Chase finally took to be a very human concern for the other whales. “He came directly from the shoal which we had just before entered,” the first mate wrote, “and in which we had struck three of his companions, as if fired with revenge for their sufferings.”
