Moby-Dick; or, The Whale · Moby-Dick, ch. 82 · block 4

Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda—indeed, by some supposed to be indirectly derived from it—is that famous story of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and often stand for each other. “Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of the sea,” saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.

Herman Melville · 1851
Project Gutenberg #15, credited to Eugene F. Irey; updated 10 June 2026. Based on the first American edition, Harper & Brothers, 1851, according to the source catalog.
Mapped print edition: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851; First American edition).
Passage ¶1856: pp. 403–404 (Scanned p. 403 · Scanned p. 404)
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Gloss address: 82.4 · chapter.paragraph · global ¶1856
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