In chapter 69, the narrator vividly describes the image of a recently captured and decapitated sperm whale floating darkly near the Pequod while sharks and birds feast of his dead remains. Despite the degrading imagery of "the air above agitated by rapacious flights of howling birds, whose beaks are like so many insulting daggers in the whale", the whale has still "lost nothing perceptibly in bulk... it is always colossal. ”, (257). Despite its crude carcass, man is always surprised by the indisputable massiveness of the whale. However, the whale is not considered huge just because of its literal size, but also because of the lasting effect its corpse will have on future ship encounters. It is the duty of a ship's captain to avoid steering his vessel into dangerous territory, the most common being large rocks near the shore. In the lines, "...the unharmed corpse of the whale, with trembling fingers, is deposited in the log -- shoals, rocks and breakers this way: watch out!", (257), the carcass of the sperm whale is often confused with rocks and It therefore necessarily follows that “for years perhaps afterwards, ships fled from this place; leaping over it like stupid sheep leaping over the void…” (257). The paragraph continues with the lines: “this is your law of precedent; this is your use of traditions; there is the story of your stubborn survival of old beliefs that never touched land…” (257), which reinforce the idea that since the sperm whale is already perceived as frightening and mysterious, its corpse leads to the same types of paranoia, worry. thoughts. So, even if the ships