Ishmael returns as narrator to tell us what he has heard of the White Whale. Because his information is all hearsay—something he has heard from others but cannot yet prove—he concedes that much of it may be exaggerated. In fact, Moby Dick has already become a sort of legendary figure, reputedly omnipresent (he supposedly appears at different places at the same time) and perhaps immortal and eternal, which Ishmael explains as being omnipresent in time. We learn more details of Ahab’s loss of leg, and Ishmael considers the meaning of “whiteness.”
