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CHAPTER 72

The Monkey-Rope.


In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale,
there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew.  Now
hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there.  There
is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time
everything has to be done everywhere.  It is much the same with him
who endeavors the description of the scene.  We must now retrace our
way a little.  It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in
the whale's back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original
hole there cut by the spades of the mates.  But how did so clumsy and
weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole?  It was
inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was,
as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster's back for the special
purpose referred to.  But in very many cases, circumstances require
that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole tensing
or stripping operation is concluded.  The whale, be it observed, lies
almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated
upon.  So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the
poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the
water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him.  On
the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume--a
shirt and socks--in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to
uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as
will presently be seen.

Being the savage's bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the
bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful
duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon
the dead whale's back.  You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a
dancing-ape by a long cord.  Just so, from the ship's steep side, did
I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called
in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas
belted round his waist.

It was a humorously perilous business for both of us.  For, before we
proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at
both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my
narrow leather one.  So that for better or for worse, we two, for the
time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more,
then both usage and honour demanded, that instead of cutting the cord,
it should drag me down in his wake.  So, then, an elongated Siamese
ligature united us.  Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother;
nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the
hempen bond entailed.

So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then,
that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to
perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock
company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and
that another's mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into
unmerited disaster and death.  Therefore, I saw that here was a sort
of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could
have so gross an injustice.  And yet still further pondering--while I
jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would
threaten to jam him--still further pondering, I say, I saw that this
situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that
breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese
connexion with a plurality of other mortals.  If your banker breaks,
you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your
pills, you die.  True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you
may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of
life.  But handle Queequeg's monkey-rope heedfully as I would,
sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard.
Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the
management of one end of it.*


*The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the
Pequod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together.  This
improvement upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man
than Stubb, in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest
possible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his
monkey-rope holder.


I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the
whale and the ship--where he would occasionally fall, from the
incessant rolling and swaying of both.  But this was not the only
jamming jeopardy he was exposed to.  Unappalled by the massacre made
upon them during the night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly
allured by the before pent blood which began to flow from the
carcass--the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees in a beehive.

And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them
aside with his floundering feet.  A thing altogether incredible were
it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise
miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.

Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have such a
ravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but wise to look sharp to
them.  Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and
then jerked the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the maw of
what seemed a peculiarly ferocious shark--he was provided with still
another protection.  Suspended over the side in one of the stages,
Tashtego and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of
keen whale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they
could reach.  This procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very
disinterested and benevolent of them.  They meant Queequeg's best
happiness, I admit; but in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from
the circumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half
hidden by the blood-muddled water, those indiscreet spades of theirs
would come nearer amputating a leg than a tall.  But poor Queequeg, I
suppose, straining and gasping there with that great iron hook--poor
Queequeg, I suppose, only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life
into the hands of his gods.

Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in
and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea--what matters
it, after all?  Are you not the precious image of each and all of us
men in this whaling world?  That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is
Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what
between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor
lad.

But courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg.  For
now, as with blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at
last climbs up the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily
trembling over the side; the steward advances, and with a benevolent,
consolatory glance hands him--what?  Some hot Cognac?  No! hands him,
ye gods! hands him a cup of tepid ginger and water!

"Ginger?  Do I smell ginger?" suspiciously asked Stubb, coming near.
"Yes, this must be ginger," peering into the as yet untasted cup.
Then standing as if incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards
the astonished steward slowly saying, "Ginger? ginger? and will you
have the goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of
ginger?  Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-boy, to
kindle a fire in this shivering cannibal?  Ginger!--what the devil is
ginger?--sea-coal? firewood?--lucifer
matches?--tinder?--gunpowder?--what the devil is ginger, I say, that
you offer this cup to our poor Queequeg here."

"There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this
business," he suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had just
come from forward.  "Will you look at that kannakin, sir; smell of
it, if you please."  Then watching the mate's countenance, he added,
"The steward, Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and
jalap to Queequeg, there, this instant off the whale.  Is the steward
an apothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort of bitters
by which he blows back the life into a half-drowned man?"

"I trust not," said Starbuck, "it is poor stuff enough."

"Aye, aye, steward," cried Stubb, "we'll teach you to drug it
harpooneer; none of your apothecary's medicine here; you want to
poison us, do ye?  You have got out insurances on our lives and want
to murder us all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye?"

"It was not me," cried Dough-Boy, "it was Aunt Charity that brought
the ginger on board; and bade me never give the harpooneers any
spirits, but only this ginger-jub--so she called it."

"Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run along with ye to
the lockers, and get something better.  I hope I do no wrong, Mr.
Starbuck.  It is the captain's orders--grog for the harpooneer on a
whale."

"Enough," replied Starbuck, "only don't hit him again, but--"

"Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or something
of that sort; and this fellow's a weazel.  What were you about
saying, sir?"

"Only this: go down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself."

When Stubb reappeared, he came with a dark flask in one hand, and a
sort of tea-caddy in the other.  The first contained strong spirits,
and was handed to Queequeg; the second was Aunt Charity's gift, and
that was freely given to the waves.



CHAPTER 73

Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him.


It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale's
prodigious head hanging to the Pequod's side.  But we must let it
continue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to
it.  For the present other matters press, and the best we can do now
for the head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold.

Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had gradually
drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit,
gave unusual tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the
Leviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking
anywhere near.  And though all hands commonly disdained the capture
of those inferior creatures; and though the Pequod was not
commissioned to cruise for them at all, and though she had passed
numbers of them near the Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now
that a Sperm Whale had been brought alongside and beheaded, to the
surprise of all, the announcement was made that a Right Whale should
be captured that day, if opportunity offered.

Nor was this long wanting.  Tall spouts were seen to leeward; and two
boats, Stubb's and Flask's, were detached in pursuit.  Pulling
further and further away, they at last became almost invisible to the
men at the mast-head.  But suddenly in the distance, they saw a great
heap of tumultuous white water, and soon after news came from aloft
that one or both the boats must be fast.  An interval passed and the
boats were in plain sight, in the act of being dragged right towards
the ship by the towing whale.  So close did the monster come to the
hull, that at first it seemed as if he meant it malice; but suddenly
going down in a maelstrom, within three rods of the planks, he wholly
disappeared from view, as if diving under the keel.  "Cut, cut!" was
the cry from the ship to the boats, which, for one instant, seemed on
the point of being brought with a deadly dash against the vessel's
side.  But having plenty of line yet in the tubs, and the whale not
sounding very rapidly, they paid out abundance of rope, and at the
same time pulled with all their might so as to get ahead of the ship.
For a few minutes the struggle was intensely critical; for while
they still slacked out the tightened line in one direction, and still
plied their oars in another, the contending strain threatened to take
them under.  But it was only a few feet advance they sought to gain.
And they stuck to it till they did gain it; when instantly, a swift
tremor was felt running like lightning along the keel, as the
strained line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose to view under
her bows, snapping and quivering; and so flinging off its drippings,
that the drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water, while the
whale beyond also rose to sight, and once more the boats were free to
fly.  But the fagged whale abated his speed, and blindly altering his
course, went round the stern of the ship towing the two boats after
him, so that they performed a complete circuit.

Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close
flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered Flask with lance for
lance; and thus round and round the Pequod the battle went, while the
multitudes of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm Whale's
body, rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking
at every new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting
fountains that poured from the smitten rock.

At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he
turned upon his back a corpse.

While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his
flukes, and in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing,
some conversation ensued between them.

"I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard," said
Stubb, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with
so ignoble a leviathan.

"Wants with it?" said Flask, coiling some spare line in the boat's
bow, "did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm
Whale's head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a
Right Whale's on the larboard; did you never hear, Stubb, that that
ship can never afterwards capsize?"

"Why not?

"I don't know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying
so, and he seems to know all about ships' charms.  But I sometimes
think he'll charm the ship to no good at last.  I don't half like
that chap, Stubb.  Did you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort
of carved into a snake's head, Stubb?"

"Sink him!  I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of
a dark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by;
look down there, Flask"--pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion
of both hands--"Aye, will I!  Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the
devil in disguise.  Do you believe that cock and bull story about his
having been stowed away on board ship?  He's the devil, I say.  The
reason why you don't see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of
sight; he carries it coiled away in his pocket, I guess.  Blast him!
now that I think of it, he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the
toes of his boots."

"He sleeps in his boots, don't he?  He hasn't got any hammock; but
I've seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging."

"No doubt, and it's because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, do
ye see, in the eye of the rigging."

"What's the old man have so much to do with him for?"

"Striking up a swap or a bargain, I suppose."

"Bargain?--about what?"

"Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and
the devil there is trying to come round him, and get him to swap away
his silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort, and then
he'll surrender Moby Dick."

"Pooh!  Stubb, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah do that?"

"I don't know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, and a wicked
one, I tell ye.  Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the
old flag-ship once, switching his tail about devilish easy and
gentlemanlike, and inquiring if the old governor was at home.  Well,
he was at home, and asked the devil what he wanted.  The devil,
switching his hoofs, up and says, 'I want John.'  'What for?' says
the old governor.  'What business is that of yours,' says the devil,
getting mad,--'I want to use him.'  'Take him,' says the
governor--and by the Lord, Flask, if the devil didn't give John the
Asiatic cholera before he got through with him, I'll eat this whale
in one mouthful.  But look sharp--ain't you all ready there?  Well,
then, pull ahead, and let's get the whale alongside."

"I think I remember some such story as you were telling," said Flask,
when at last the two boats were slowly advancing with their burden
towards the ship, "but I can't remember where."

"Three Spaniards?  Adventures of those three bloody-minded soladoes?
Did ye read it there, Flask?  I guess ye did?"

"No: never saw such a book; heard of it, though.  But now, tell me,
Stubb, do you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now,
was the same you say is now on board the Pequod?"

"Am I the same man that helped kill this whale?  Doesn't the devil
live for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead?  Did you ever
see any parson a wearing mourning for the devil?  And if the devil
has a latch-key to get into the admiral's cabin, don't you suppose he
can crawl into a porthole?  Tell me that, Mr. Flask?"

"How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?"

"Do you see that mainmast there?" pointing to the ship; "well, that's
the figure one; now take all the hoops in the Pequod's hold, and
string along in a row with that mast, for oughts, do you see; well,
that wouldn't begin to be Fedallah's age.  Nor all the coopers in
creation couldn't show hoops enough to make oughts enough."

"But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now, that
you meant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good chance.
Now, if he's so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he is
going to live for ever, what good will it do to pitch him
overboard--tell me that?

"Give him a good ducking, anyhow."

"But he'd crawl back."

"Duck him again; and keep ducking him."

"Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you, though--yes,
and drown you--what then?"

"I should like to see him try it; I'd give him such a pair of black
eyes that he wouldn't dare to show his face in the admiral's cabin
again for a long while, let alone down in the orlop there, where he
lives, and hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so much.
Damn the devil, Flask; so you suppose I'm afraid of the devil?  Who's
afraid of him, except the old governor who daresn't catch him and put
him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about
kidnapping people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the
people the devil kidnapped, he'd roast for him?  There's a governor!"

"Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab?"

"Do I suppose it?  You'll know it before long, Flask.  But I am going
now to keep a sharp look-out on him; and if I see anything very
suspicious going on, I'll just take him by the nape of his neck, and
say--Look here, Beelzebub, you don't do it; and if he makes any fuss,
by the Lord I'll make a grab into his pocket for his tail, take it to
the capstan, and give him such a wrenching and heaving, that his tail
will come short off at the stump--do you see; and then, I rather
guess when he finds himself docked in that queer fashion, he'll sneak
off without the poor satisfaction of feeling his tail between his
legs."

"And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?"

"Do with it?  Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;--what else?"

"Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along,
Stubb?"

"Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship."

The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side,
where fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for
securing him.

"Didn't I tell you so?" said Flask; "yes, you'll soon see this right
whale's head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti's."

In good time, Flask's saying proved true.  As before, the Pequod
steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale's head, now, by the
counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely
strained, you may well believe.  So, when on one side you hoist in
Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist
in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight.  Thus,
some minds for ever keep trimming boat.  Oh, ye foolish! throw all
these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and
right.

In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside the
ship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the
case of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance, the head is cut
off whole, but in the former the lips and tongue are separately
removed and hoisted on deck, with all the well known black bone
attached to what is called the crown-piece.  But nothing like this,
in the present case, had been done.  The carcases of both whales had
dropped astern; and the head-laden ship not a little resembled a mule
carrying a pair of overburdening panniers.

Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and ever
and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his
own hand.  And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his
shadow; while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed only
to blend with, and lengthen Ahab's.  As the crew toiled on,
Laplandish speculations were bandied among them, concerning all these
passing things.



CHAPTER 74

The Sperm Whale's Head--Contrasted View.


Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us
join them, and lay together our own.

Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right
Whale are by far the most noteworthy.  They are the only whales
regularly hunted by man.  To the Nantucketer, they present the two
extremes of all the known varieties of the whale.  As the external
difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a
head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's side; and as we
may freely go from one to the other, by merely stepping across the
deck:--where, I should like to know, will you obtain a better chance
to study practical cetology than here?

In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between
these heads.  Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there
is a certain mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the
Right Whale's sadly lacks.  There is more character in the Sperm
Whale's head.  As you behold it, you involuntarily yield the immense
superiority to him, in point of pervading dignity.  In the present
instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and salt
colour of his head at the summit, giving token of advanced age and
large experience.  In short, he is what the fishermen technically
call a "grey-headed whale."

Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads--namely, the
two most important organs, the eye and the ear.  Far back on the side
of the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale's jaw, if
you narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you
would fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of all proportion is it
to the magnitude of the head.

Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale's eyes, it is
plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more
than he can one exactly astern.  In a word, the position of the
whale's eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears; and you may fancy,
for yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey
objects through your ears.  You would find that you could only
command some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight
side-line of sight; and about thirty more behind it.  If your
bitterest foe were walking straight towards you, with dagger uplifted
in broad day, you would not be able to see him, any more than if he
were stealing upon you from behind.  In a word, you would have two
backs, so to speak; but, at the same time, also, two fronts (side
fronts): for what is it that makes the front of a man--what, indeed,
but his eyes?

Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the
eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so
as to produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar
position of the whale's eyes, effectually divided as they are by many
cubic feet of solid head, which towers between them like a great
mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of course, must
wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ imparts.
The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this side,
and another distinct picture on that side; while all between must be
profound darkness and nothingness to him.  Man may, in effect, be
said to look out on the world from a sentry-box with two joined
sashes for his window.  But with the whale, these two sashes are
separately inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly impairing
the view.  This peculiarity of the whale's eyes is a thing always to
be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader
in some subsequent scenes.

A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this
visual matter as touching the Leviathan.  But I must be content with
a hint.  So long as a man's eyes are open in the light, the act of
seeing is involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically
seeing whatever objects are before him.  Nevertheless, any one's
experience will teach him, that though he can take in an
undiscriminating sweep of things at one glance, it is quite
impossible for him, attentively, and completely, to examine any two
things--however large or however small--at one and the same instant
of time; never mind if they lie side by side and touch each other.
But if you now come to separate these two objects, and surround each
by a circle of profound darkness; then, in order to see one of them,
in such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will
be utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness.  How is it,
then, with the whale?  True, both his eyes, in themselves, must
simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more comprehensive,
combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the same moment of
time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one side of
him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction?  If he can, then
is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able
simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct
problems in Euclid.  Nor, strictly investigated, is there any
incongruity in this comparison.

It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when
beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer
frights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly
proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their
divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve
them.

But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye.  If you are
an entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads
for hours, and never discover that organ.  The ear has no external
leaf whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a
quill, so wondrously minute is it.  It is lodged a little behind the
eye.  With respect to their ears, this important difference is to be
observed between the sperm whale and the right.  While the ear of
the former has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely
and evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite
imperceptible from without.

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the
world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear
which is smaller than a hare's?  But if his eyes were broad as the
lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the
porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or
sharper of hearing?  Not at all.--Why then do you try to "enlarge"
your mind?  Subtilize it.

Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand,
cant over the sperm whale's head, that it may lie bottom up;
then, ascending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the
mouth; and were it not that the body is now completely separated from
it, with a lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth
Cave of his stomach.  But let us hold on here by this tooth, and look
about us where we are.  What a really beautiful and chaste-looking
mouth! from floor to ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a
glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal satins.

But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems
like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at
one end, instead of one side.  If you pry it up, so as to get it
overhead, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific
portcullis; and such, alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the
fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force.  But far
more terrible is it to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see
some sulky whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw,
some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with
his body, for all the world like a ship's jib-boom.  This whale is
not dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps;
hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have
relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a
reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws
upon him.

In most cases this lower jaw--being easily unhinged by a practised
artist--is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of
extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard
white whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious
articles, including canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to
riding-whips.

With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were
an anchor; and when the proper time comes--some few days after the
other work--Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished
dentists, are set to drawing teeth.  With a keen cutting-spade,
Queequeg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts,
and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as
Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands.  There
are generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down,
but undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion.  The jaw is
afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building
houses.



CHAPTER 75

The Right Whale's Head--Contrasted View.


Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right
Whale's head.

As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared to a
Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly
rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather
inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe.  Two hundred
years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a
shoemaker's last.  And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of
the nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be
lodged, she and all her progeny.

But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume
different aspects, according to your point of view.  If you stand on
its summit and look at these two F-shaped spoutholes, you would take
the whole head for an enormous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the
apertures in its sounding-board.  Then, again, if you fix your eye
upon this strange, crested, comb-like incrustation on the top of the
mass--this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the
"crown," and the Southern fishers the "bonnet" of the Right Whale;
fixing your eyes solely on this, you would take the head for the
trunk of some huge oak, with a bird's nest in its crotch.  At any
rate, when you watch those live crabs that nestle here on this
bonnet, such an idea will be almost sure to occur to you; unless,
indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the technical term "crown" also
bestowed upon it; in which case you will take great interest in
thinking how this mighty monster is actually a diademed king of the
sea, whose green crown has been put together for him in this
marvellous manner.  But if this whale be a king, he is a very sulky
looking fellow to grace a diadem.  Look at that hanging lower lip!
what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter's
measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and
pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.

A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped.
The fissure is about a foot across.  Probably the mother during an
important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when
earthquakes caused the beach to gape.  Over this lip, as over a
slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth.  Upon my word were I
at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam.
Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went?  The roof is about
twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were
a regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides,
present us with those wondrous, half vertical, scimetar-shaped slats
of whalebone, say three hundred on a side, which depending from the
upper part of the head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds
which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned.  The edges of these
bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale
strains the water, and in whose intricacies he retains the small
fish, when openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding
time.  In the central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural
order, there are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges,
whereby some whalemen calculate the creature's age, as the age of an
oak by its circular rings.  Though the certainty of this criterion is
far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical
probability.  At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far
greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem
reasonable.

In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies
concerning these blinds.  One voyager in Purchas calls them the
wondrous "whiskers" inside of the whale's mouth;* another, "hogs'
bristles"; a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following
elegant language: "There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing
on each side of his upper CHOP, which arch over his tongue on each
side of his mouth."


*This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker,
or rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on
the upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw.  Sometimes these
tufts impart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn
countenance.


As every one knows, these same "hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers,"
"blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks
and other stiffening contrivances.  But in this particular, the
demand has long been on the decline.  It was in Queen Anne's time
that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the
fashion.  And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the
jaws of the whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with the
like thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for
protection; the umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.

But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and,
standing in the Right Whale's mouth, look around you afresh.  Seeing
all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you
not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing
upon its thousand pipes?  For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of
the softest Turkey--the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the
floor of the mouth.  It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in
pieces in hoisting it on deck.  This particular tongue now before us;
at a passing glance I should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it
will yield you about that amount of oil.

Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started
with--that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely
different heads.  To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no
great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible
of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's.  Nor in the Sperm Whale are
there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely
anything of a tongue.  Again, the Right Whale has two external
spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.

Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet
lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the
other will not be very long in following.

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there?  It is the
same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead
seem now faded away.  I think his broad brow to be full of a
prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to
death.  But mark the other head's expression.  See that amazing lower
lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to
embrace the jaw.  Does not this whole head seem to speak of an
enormous practical resolution in facing death?  This Right Whale I
take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might
have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.



CHAPTER 76

The Battering-Ram.


Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale's head, I would have
you, as a sensible physiologist, simply--particularly remark its
front aspect, in all its compacted collectedness.  I would have you
investigate it now with the sole view of forming to yourself some
unexaggerated, intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power
may be lodged there.  Here is a vital point; for you must either
satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain
an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true
events, perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history.

You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm
Whale, the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane
to the water; you observe that the lower part of that front slopes
considerably backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat for the
long socket which receives the boom-like lower jaw; you observe that
the mouth is entirely under the head, much in the same way, indeed,
as though your own mouth were entirely under your chin.  Moreover you
observe that the whale has no external nose; and that what nose he
has--his spout hole--is on the top of his head; you observe that his
eyes and ears are at the sides of his head, nearly one third of his
entire length from the front.  Wherefore, you must now have perceived
that the front of the Sperm Whale's head is a dead, blind wall,
without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort whatsoever.
Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the extreme, lower,
backward sloping part of the front of the head, is there the
slightest vestige of bone; and not till you get near twenty feet from
the forehead do you come to the full cranial development.  So that
this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad.  Finally, though, as
will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise the most delicate
oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of the substance
which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy.  In some
previous place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the body
of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange.  Just so with the head;
but with this difference: about the head this envelope, though not so
thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not
handled it.  The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted
by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it.  It is as
though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses' hoofs.
I do not think that any sensation lurks in it.

Bethink yourself also of another thing.  When two large, loaded
Indiamen chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the
docks, what do the sailors do?  They do not suspend between them, at
the point of coming contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or
wood.  No, they hold there a large, round wad of tow and cork,
enveloped in the thickest and toughest of ox-hide.  That bravely and
uninjured takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken
handspikes and iron crow-bars.  By itself this sufficiently
illustrates the obvious fact I drive at.  But supplementary to this,
it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as ordinary fish possess
what is called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at will, of
distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know,
has no such provision in him; considering, too, the otherwise
inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head altogether
beneath the surface, and anon swims with it high elevated out of the
water; considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope;
considering the unique interior of his head; it has hypothetically
occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs
there may possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected
connexion with the outer air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric
distension and contraction.  If this be so, fancy the
irresistibleness of that might, to which the most impalpable and
destructive of all elements contributes.

Now, mark.  Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable
wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a
mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled
wood is--by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the
smallest insect.  So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all
the specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in
this expansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more
inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all
ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that though the
Sperm Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed
the Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your
eye-brow.  For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and
sentimentalist in Truth.  But clear Truth is a thing for salamander
giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials
then?  What befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's
veil at Lais?



CHAPTER 77

The Great Heidelburgh Tun.


Now comes the Baling of the Case.  But to comprehend it aright, you
must know something of the curious internal structure of the thing
operated upon.

Regarding the Sperm Whale's head as a solid oblong, you may, on an
inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins,* whereof the
lower is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the
upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end
forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale.  At the
middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and
then you have two almost equal parts, which before were naturally
divided by an internal wall of a thick tendinous substance.


*Quoin is not a Euclidean term.  It belongs to the pure nautical
mathematics.  I know not that it has been defined before.  A quoin is
a solid which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by
the steep inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of
both sides.


The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb
of oil, formed by the crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand
infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole
extent.  The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as the
great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale.  And as that famous great
tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale's vast plaited
forehead forms innumerable strange devices for the emblematical
adornment of his wondrous tun.  Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was
always replenished with the most excellent of the wines of the
Rhenish valleys, so the tun of the whale contains by far the most
precious of all his oily vintages; namely, the highly-prized
spermaceti, in its absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state.
Nor is this precious substance found unalloyed in any other part of
the creature.  Though in life it remains perfectly fluid, yet, upon
exposure to the air, after death, it soon begins to concrete; sending
forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as when the first thin delicate
ice is just forming in water.  A large whale's case generally yields
about five hundred gallons of sperm, though from unavoidable
circumstances, considerable of it is spilled, leaks, and dribbles
away, or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business of
securing what you can.

I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun was
coated within, but in superlative richness that coating could not
possibly have compared with the silken pearl-coloured membrane, like
the lining of a fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the Sperm
Whale's case.

It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale
embraces the entire length of the entire top of the head; and
since--as has been elsewhere set forth--the head embraces one third
of the whole length of the creature, then setting that length down at
eighty feet for a good sized whale, you have more than twenty-six
feet for the depth of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up and
down against a ship's side.

As in decapitating the whale, the operator's instrument is brought
close to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the
spermaceti magazine; he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful,
lest a careless, untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and
wastingly let out its invaluable contents.  It is this decapitated
end of the head, also, which is at last elevated out of the water,
and retained in that position by the enormous cutting tackles, whose
hempen combinations, on one side, make quite a wilderness of ropes in
that quarter.

Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous
and--in this particular instance--almost fatal operation whereby the
Sperm Whale's great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.



CHAPTER 78

Cistern and Buckets.


Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his
erect posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm,
to the part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun.  He has
carried with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two
parts, travelling through a single-sheaved block.  Securing this
block, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of
the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck.
Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part, the Indian drops through
the air, till dexterously he lands on the summit of the head.
There--still high elevated above the rest of the company, to whom he
vivaciously cries--he seems some Turkish Muezzin calling the good
people to prayers from the top of a tower.  A short-handled sharp
spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches for the proper
place to begin breaking into the Tun.  In this business he proceeds
very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house, sounding
the walls to find where the gold is masoned in.  By the time this
cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like a
well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the
other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or
three alert hands.  These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of
the Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole.
Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the
bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the
word to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all
bubbling like a dairy-maid's pail of new milk.  Carefully lowered
from its height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed
hand, and quickly emptied into a large tub.  Then remounting aloft,
it again goes through the same round until the deep cistern will
yield no more.  Towards the end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole
harder and harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until some
twenty feet of the pole have gone down.

Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way;
several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at
once a queer accident happened.  Whether it was that Tashtego, that
wild Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment
his one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head;
or whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or
whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without
stating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no
telling now; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket
came suckingly up--my God! poor Tashtego--like the twin reciprocating
bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this
great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went
clean out of sight!

"Man overboard!" cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation
first came to his senses.  "Swing the bucket this way!" and putting
one foot into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold
on the whip itself, the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the
head, almost before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom.
Meantime, there was a terrible tumult.  Looking over the side, they
saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the
surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous
idea; whereas it was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by
those struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk.

At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was
clearing the whip--which had somehow got foul of the great cutting
tackles--a sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable
horror of all, one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore
out, and with a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till
the drunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg.  The one
remaining hook, upon which the entire strain now depended, seemed
every instant to be on the point of giving way; an event still more
likely from the violent motions of the head.

"Come down, come down!" yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one
hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should
drop, he would still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the
foul line, rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well,
meaning that the buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted
out.

"In heaven's name, man," cried Stubb, "are you ramming home a
cartridge there?--Avast!  How will that help him; jamming that
iron-bound bucket on top of his head?  Avast, will ye!"

"Stand clear of the tackle!" cried a voice like the bursting of a
rocket.

Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass
dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool;
the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her
glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging--now
over the sailors' heads, and now over the water--Daggoo, through a
thick mist of spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous
tackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down
to the bottom of the sea!  But hardly had the blinding vapour cleared
away, when a naked figure with a boarding-sword in his hand, was for
one swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks.  The next, a loud
splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue.  One
packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted every ripple,
as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the sinker or the
diver could be seen.  Some hands now jumped into a boat alongside,
and pushed a little off from the ship.

"Ha! ha!" cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging
perch overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm
thrust upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm
thrust forth from the grass over a grave.

"Both! both!--it is both!"--cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout;
and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand,
and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian.  Drawn into
the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego
was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.

Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished?  Why, diving after
the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made
side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there;
then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and
upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head.  He averred, that
upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well
knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great
trouble;--he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and
toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next
trial, he came forth in the good old way--head foremost.  As for the
great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected.

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of
Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was
successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward
and apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to
be forgotten.  Midwifery should be taught in the same course with
fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.

I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header's will be sure to
seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have
either seen or heard of some one's falling into a cistern ashore; an
accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too than
the Indian's, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of
the Sperm Whale's well.

But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this?  We
thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the
lightest and most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink
in an element of a far greater specific gravity than itself.  We have
thee there.  Not at all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash
fell in, the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents,
leaving little but the dense tendinous wall of the well--a double
welded, hammered substance, as I have before said, much heavier than
the sea water, and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost.  But
the tendency to rapid sinking in this substance was in the present
instance materially counteracted by the other parts of the head
remaining undetached from it, so that it sank very slowly and
deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing
his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say.  Yes, it was a
running delivery, so it was.

Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious
perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant
spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber
and sanctum sanctorum of the whale.  Only one sweeter end can readily
be recalled--the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking
honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of
it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died
embalmed.  How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's
honey head, and sweetly perished there?



CHAPTER 79

The Prairie.


To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this
Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has
as yet undertaken.  Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful
as for Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of
Gibraltar, or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the
Dome of the Pantheon.  Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater
not only treats of the various faces of men, but also attentively
studies the faces of horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells in
detail upon the modifications of expression discernible therein.  Nor
have Gall and his disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints
touching the phrenological characteristics of other beings than man.
Therefore, though I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in the
application of these two semi-sciences to the whale, I will do my
endeavor.  I try all things; I achieve what I can.

Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous creature.
He has no proper nose.  And since the nose is the central and most
conspicuous of the features; and since it perhaps most modifies and
finally controls their combined expression; hence it would seem that
its entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely
affect the countenance of the whale.  For as in landscape gardening,
a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost
indispensable to the completion of the scene; so no face can be
physiognomically in keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of
the nose.  Dash the nose from Phidias's marble Jove, and what a sorry
remainder!  Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all
his proportions are so stately, that the same deficiency which in the
sculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no blemish at all.  Nay, it
is an added grandeur.  A nose to the whale would have been
impertinent.  As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his
vast head in your jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never
insulted by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled.  A
pestilent conceit, which so often will insist upon obtruding even
when beholding the mightiest royal beadle on his throne.

In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view
to be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head.
This aspect is sublime.

In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with
the morning.  In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the
bull has a touch of the grand in it.  Pushing heavy cannon up
mountain defiles, the elephant's brow is majestic.  Human or animal,
the mystical brow is as that great golden seal affixed by the German
Emperors to their decrees.  It signifies--"God: done this day by my
hand."  But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very often the
brow is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snow line.
Few are the foreheads which like Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise
so high, and descend so low, that the eyes themselves seem clear,
eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and all above them in the forehead's
wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending there to
drink, as the Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer.
But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity
inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in
that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more
forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature.  For
you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed;
no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing
but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles;
dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men.  Nor, in
profile, does this wondrous brow diminish; though that way viewed its
grandeur does not domineer upon you so.  In profile, you plainly
perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the
forehead's middle, which, in man, is Lavater's mark of genius.

But how?  Genius in the Sperm Whale?  Has the Sperm Whale ever
written a book, spoken a speech?  No, his great genius is declared in
his doing nothing particular to prove it.  It is moreover declared in
his pyramidical silence.  And this reminds me that had the great
Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been
deified by their child-magian thoughts.  They deified the crocodile
of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale
has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be
incapable of protrusion.  If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical
nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods
of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky;
in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat,
the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.

Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics.  But there
is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every
being's face.  Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a
passing fable.  If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty
languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its
profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope
to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow?  I but put that
brow before you.  Read it if you can.

}
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