globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly
broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe
grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma, —literally and
truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the
time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in
that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost
began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue
in allaying the heat of anger: while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely
free from all ill-will, or petulence, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till
I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of
insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my
co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such
an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget;
that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into
their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, —Oh! my dear fellow beings, why
should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest
ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all
squeeze ourselves
..
into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and
sperm of kindness. Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For
now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in
all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of
attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy;
but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side,
the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case
eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of
angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti. Now, while
discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things akin to it, in the
business of preparing the sperm whale for the try-works. First comes
white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering part of the fish,
and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It is tough with congealed
tendons —a wad of muscle —but still contains some oil. After being severed
from the whale, the white-horse is first cut into portable oblongs ere going
to the mincer. They look much like blocks of Berkshire marble. Plum-pudding
is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the whale's flesh, here
and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and often participating to a
considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is a most refreshing, convivial,
beautiful object to behold. As its name imports, it is of an exceedingly
rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with
spots of the deepest crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures
of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I
confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something
as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might
have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison
season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually
fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.
..
There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in the
course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling adequately
to describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation original with the
whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance. It is an ineffably
oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the tubs of sperm, after a
prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting. I hold it to be the
wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case, coalescing. Gurry, so
called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but sometimes
incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the dark, glutinous
substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland or right whale, and
much of which covers the decks of those inferior souls who hunt that ignoble
Leviathan. Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's
vocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman's nipper
is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of
Leviathan's tail: it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is
about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the oily deck,
it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless blandishments, as of
magic, allures along with it all impurities. But to learn all about these
recondite matters, your best way is at once to descend into the blubber-room,
and have a long talk with its inmates. This place has previously been
mentioned as the receptacle for the blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted
from the whale. When the proper time arrives for cutting up its contents,
this apartment is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one
side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen.
They generally go in pairs, —a pike-and-gaff-man and a spade-man. The
whaling-pike is similar to a frigate's boarding-weapon of the same name. The
gaff is something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a
sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches
and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself,
perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is
sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless; the thing
..
he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge.
If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistants', would you be
very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.
..






.. < chapter xcv 6 THE CASSOCK >
Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a
certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled
forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with
no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have
seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous
cistern in the whale's huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw;
not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you,
as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone, — longer than a Kentuckian is
tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony
idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or, rather, in old times, its
likeness was. Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen
Maachah in Judea; and for worshipping which, king Asa, her son, did depose
her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook
Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapter of the first book of Kings.
Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and assisted by
two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners call it, and
with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying
a dead comrade from the field. extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now
proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the
pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg;
gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double its diameter; and at last
hangs it, well spread, in the
..
rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some three feet
of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two slits for
arm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The
mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling.
Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect
him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office. That office
consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the pots; an operation
which is conducted at a curious wooden horse, planted endwise against the
bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath it, into which the minced pieces
drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt orator's desk. Arrayed in decent black;
occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for
an archbishoprick, what a lad for a Pope were this mincer!
..
Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the mates to
the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as thin
slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the
oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased, besides
perhaps improving it in quality.
..






.. < chapter xcvi 17 THE TRY-WORKS >
Besides her hoisted boats, an American
whaler is outwardly distinguished by her try-works. She presents the curious
anomaly of the most solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting
the completed ship. it is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were
transported to her planks. The try-works are planted between the foremast and
main-mast, the most roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a
peculiar strength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of
brick and mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The
foundation does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly secured to
the surface by
..
ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all sides, and screwing it down to the
timbers. On the flanks it is cased with wood, and at top completely covered
by a large, sloping, battened hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the
great try-pots, two in number, and each of several barrels' capacity. When
not in use, they are kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished
with soapstone and sand, till they shine within like silver punch-bowls.
During the night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and
coil themselves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them —one
man in each pot, side by side —many confidential communications are carried
on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound mathematical
meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Pequod, with the
soapstone diligently circling round me, that I was first indirectly struck by
the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies gliding along the cycloid,
my soapstone for example, will descend from any point in precisely the same
time. Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare
masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of the
furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted with heavy
doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented from communicating
itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir extending under the entire
inclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this
reservoir is kept replenished with water as fast as it evaporates. There are
no external chimneys; they open direct from the rear wall. And here let us
go back for a moment. It was about nine o'clock at night that the Pequod's
try-works were first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to
oversee the business. All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You
cook, fire the works. This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been
thrusting his shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it
said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed
for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick
ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp,
shrivelled
..
blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its
unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric
burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale
supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his
own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and
not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable,
wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal
pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument
for the pit. By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear
from the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild
ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce
flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and
illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire.
The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful
deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris,
issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails,
bore down upon the turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations. The
hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth in front
of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers,
always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched
hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires
beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch
them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To every pitch of
the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to
leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth of the works, on the further side
of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa.
Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red
heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny
features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and
the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely
revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they
..
narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in
words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them,
like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the
harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as
the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and
yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of
the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth,
and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted
with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into
that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her
monomaniac commander's soul. So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm,
and for long hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea.
Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the
redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the
fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at
last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that
unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm.
But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable)
thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was horribly
conscious of something fatally wrong. The jaw-bone tiller smote my side,
which leaned against it; in my ears was the low hum of sails, just beginning
to shake in the wind; I thought my eyes were open; I was half conscious of
putting my fingers to the lids and mechanically stretching them still further
apart. But, spite of all this, I could see no compass before me to steer by;
though it seemed but a minute since I had been watching the card, by the
steady binnacle lamp illuminating it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet
gloom, now and then made ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost was the
impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much
bound to any haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern. A stark,
bewildered feeling, as of death, came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped
the tiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow,
..
in some enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is the matter with me? thought
I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the
ship's stern, with my back to her prow and the compass. In an instant I faced
back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind, and
very probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful the relief from this
unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency of being
brought by the lee! look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never
dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept
the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when
its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun,
the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames,
the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious,
golden, glad sun, the only true lamp —all others but liars! Nevertheless the
sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's accursed Campagna, nor wide
Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the
moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth,
and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who
hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true —not true,
or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of
Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the
fine hammered steel of woe. All is vanity. ALL. This wilful world hath
not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals
and jails, and walks fast crossing grave-yards, and would rather talk of
operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of
sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing
wise, and therefore jolly; —not that man is fitted to sit down on
tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous
Solomon. But even Solomon, he says, the man that wandereth out of the way
of understanding shall remain ( i. e. even while living) in the congregation
of the dead. Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee,
deaden thee; as for the time it did me.
..
There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there
is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest
gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces.
And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the
mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still
higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
..






.. < chapter xcvii 9 THE LAMP >
Had you descended from the Pequod's
try-works to the Pequod's forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping,
for one single moment you would have almost thought you were standing in
some illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay in
their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of
lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes. In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is
more scarce than the milk of queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the
dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the
whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his
berth an Aladdin's lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest
night the ship's black hull still houses an illumination. See with what
entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps —often but old bottles
and vials, though —to the copper cooler at the try-works, and replenishes
them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns, too, the purest of oil, in
its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to
solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass
butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its
freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his
own supper of game.
..






.. < chapter xcviii 2 STOWING DOWN AND CLEARING UP >
Already has it been
related how the great leviathan is afar off descried from the mast-head; how
he is chased over the watery moors, and slaughtered in the valleys of the
deep; how he is then towed alongside and beheaded; and how (on the
principle which entitled the headsman of old to the garments in which the
beheaded was killed) his great padded surtout becomes the property of his
executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots, and, like
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed
through the fire; —but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of this
part of the description by rehearsing —singing, if I may — the romantic
proceeding of decanting off his oil into the casks and striking them down into
the hold, where once again leviathan returns to his native profundities,
sliding along beneath the surface as before; but, alas! never more to rise
and blow. While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the
six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling this
way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed round and
headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot across the slippery
deck, like so many land slides, till at last man-handled and stayed in their
course; and all round the hoops, rap, rap, go as many hammers as can play
upon them, for now, ex officio, every sailor is a cooper. At length, when
the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the great hatchways are
unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open, and down go the casks to
their final rest in the sea. This done, the hatches are replaced, and
hermetically closed, like a closet walled up. In the sperm fishery, this is
perhaps one of the most remarkable incidents in all the business of whaling.
One day the planks stream with freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred
..
quarter-deck enormous masses of the whale's head are profanely piled; great
rusty casks lie about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has
besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness;
the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din is
deafening. But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears
in this self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and
try-works, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel,
with a most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil
possesses a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the decks
never look so white as just after what they call an affair of oil. Besides,
from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale, a potent ley is readily
made; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back of the whale remains
clinging to the side, that ley quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently
along the bulwarks, and with buckets of water and rags restore them to their
full tidiness. The soot is brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous
implements which have been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed and put
away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the try-works, completely
hiding the pots; every cask is out of sight; all tackles are coiled in
unseen nooks; and when by the combined and simultaneous industry of almost
the entire ship's company, the whole of this conscientious duty is at last
concluded, then the crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions; shift
themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh
and all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland. Now,
with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and humorously
discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics; propose to mat the
deck; think of having hangings to the top; object not to taking tea by
moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to such musked mariners of
oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short of audacity. They know not the
thing you distantly allude to. Away, and bring us napkins! But mark: aloft
there, at the three mast heads, stand three
..
men intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again
soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot
somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted
labors, which know no night; continuing straight through for ninety-six
hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their wrists with all day
rowing on the Line, —they only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and
heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very
sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial
sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this, they have
finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy
room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of
their clean frocks, are startled by the cry of There she blows! and away
they fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again.
Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have
we mortals by long toilings extracted from the world's vast bulk its small but
valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its
defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul;
hardly is this done, when — There she blows! —the ghost is spouted up, and
away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old
routine again. Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright
Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I
sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage — and, foolish as I am,
taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!
..






.. < chapter xcix 30 THE DOUBLOON >
Ere now it has been related how Ahab was
wont to pace his quarter-deck, taking regular turns at either limit, the
binnacle
..
and mainmast; but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it
has not been added how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in
his mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there
strangely eyeing the particular object before him. When he halted before the
binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass, that
glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of his purpose; and
when resuming his walk he again paused before the mainmast, then, as the same
riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore the
same aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild longing, if
not hopefulness. But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed
to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it,
as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some
monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some certain
significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the
round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as
they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way. Now
this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of the heart of
gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden sands, the head-waters of
many a Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst all the rustiness of iron
bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes, yet, untouchable and immaculate to
any foulness, it still preserved its Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst
a ruthless crew and every hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the
livelong nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering
approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left
it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and
however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as
the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch
by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever
live to spend it. Now those noble golden coins of South America are as
..
medals of the sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and
volcanoes; sun's disks and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich
banners waving, are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold
seems almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by
passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic. It so chanced that
the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its
round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this
bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and
beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway
up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those
letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a
tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a
segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual
cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.
Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now pausing.
There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all
other grand and lofty things; look here, —three peaks as proud as Lucifer.
The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, the
undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab; and this
round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician's
glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious
self. Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them; it
cannot solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but
see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months
before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So
be it, then. Born in throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains and die
in pangs! So be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it,
then. No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil's claws must
have left their mouldings there since yesterday, murmured Starbuck to
himself, leaning against the bulwarks. The old
..
man seems to read Belshazzar's awful writing. I have never marked the coin
inspectingly. He goes below; let me read. A dark valley between three
mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint
earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over all
our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope. If we
bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil; but if we lift them,
the bright sun meets our glance half way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun
is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace
from him, we gaze for him in vain! This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly,
but still sadly to me. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely. There
now's the old Mogul, soliloquized Stubb by the try-works, he's been twigging
it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and both with faces which I
should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms long. And all from looking
at a piece of gold, which did I have it now on Negro Hill or in Corlaer's
Hook, I'd not look at it very long ere spending it. Humph! in my poor,
insignificant opinion, I regard this as queer. I have seen doubloons before
now in my voyagings; your doubloons of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru,
your doubloons of Chili, your doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of
Popayan; with plenty of gold moidores and pistoles, and joes, and half joes,
and quarter joes. what then should there be in this doubloon of the Equator
that is so killing wonderful? By Golconda! let me read it once. Halloa!
here's signs and wonders truly! That, now, is what old Bowditch in his
Epitome calls the zodiac, and what my almanack below calls ditto. I'll get
the almanack and as I have heard devils can be raised with Daboll's
arithmetic, I'll try my hand at raising a meaning out of these queer
curvicues here with the Massachusetts calendar. Here's the book. Let's see
now. Signs and wonders; and the sun, he's always among 'em. Hem, hem, hem;
here they are —here they go —all alive: —Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the
Bull and Jimimi! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he
wheels among 'em. Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing the threshold
between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book! you lie there; the
fact is, you books must know your
..
places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to
supply the thoughts. That's my small experience, so far as the Massachusetts
calendar, and Bowditch's navigator, and Daboll's arithmetic go. Signs and
wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in
wonders! There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist—hark! By Jove, I have
it! Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round
chapter; and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack!
To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram —lecherous dog, he begets us; then,
Taurus, or the Bull —he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins —
that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer
the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring
Lion, lies in the path —he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his
paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry
and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales —happiness
weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how
we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are
curing the wound, when whang come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the
Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside; here's
the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and
headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours out his
whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we
sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through
it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. Jollily he,
aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and so, alow here, does jolly
Stubb. Oh, jolly's the word for aye! Adieu, Doubloon! But stop; here comes
little King-Post; dodge round the try-works, now, and let's hear what he'll
have to say. There; he's before it; he'll out with something presently. So,
so; he's beginning. I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold,
and whoever raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So,
what's all this staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that's true;
and at two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and
..
sixty cigars. I wont smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and
here's nine hundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to spy 'em
out. Shall I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a
foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort of
wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman —the old
hearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea. He
luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the other side of the
mast; why, there's a horse-shoe nailed on that side; and now he's back
again; what does that mean? Hark! he's muttering —voice like an old
worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen! If the White Whale be
raised, it must be in a month and a day, when the sun stands in some one of
these signs. I've studied signs, and know their marks; they were taught me
two score years ago, by the old witch in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will
the sun then be? The horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right opposite the
gold. And what's the horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign —the
roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of
thee. There's another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men
in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg —all
tattooing —looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the
Cannibal? As I live he's comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone; thinks
the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I suppose, as
the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy in the back country. And by Jove, he's
found something there in the vicinity of his thigh —I guess it's Sagittarius,
or the Archer. No: he don't know what to make of the doubloon; he takes it
for an old button off some king's trowsers. But, aside again! here comes
that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiled out of sight as usual, oakum in the
toes of his pumps as usual. What does he say, with that look of his? Ah,
only makes a sign to the sign and bows himself; there is a sun on the coin
—fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho! more and more. This way comes Pip
—poor boy! would he had died, or I; he's half horrible to me. He too has
been watching all of these interpreters —myself included —and look now, he
comes to read,
..
with that unearthly idiot face. stand away again and hear him. hark! I
look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look. Upon my soul,
he's been studying Murray's Grammar! Improving his mind, poor fellow! But
what's that he says now — hist! I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye
look, they look. Why, he's getting it by heart —hist! again. I look,
you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look. Well, that's funny.
And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I'm a crow,
especially when I stand a'top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw!
caw! Ain't I a crow? And where's the scare-crow? There he stands; two
bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves
of an old jacket. Wonder if he means me? —complimentary! —poor lad! —I
could go hang myself. Any way, for the present, I'll quit Pip's vicinity.
I can stand the rest, for they have plain wits; but he's too crazy-witty
for my sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering. Here's the ship's navel,
this doubloon here, and they are all on fire to unscrew it. But, unscrew
your navel, and what's the consequence? Then again, if it stays here, that
is ugly, too, for when aught's nailed to the mast it's a sign that things grow
desperate. Ha, ha! old Ahab! the White Whale; he'll nail ye! This is a
pine tree. My father, in old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and
found a silver ring grown over in it; some old darkey's wedding ring. How
did it get there? And so they'll say in the resurrection, when they come to
fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters
for the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious gold! —the green
miser 'll hoard ye soon! Hish! hish! God goes 'mong the worlds
blackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and cook us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey,
hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your hoe-cake done!
..






.. < chapter c 2 LEG AND ARM THE PEQUOD, OF NANTUCKET, MEETS THE SAMUEL >

ENDERBY, OF LONDON Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale? So cried Ahab,
once more hailing a ship showing English colors, bearing down under the
stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his hoisted
quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who
was carelessly reclining in his own boat's bow. He was a darkly-tanned,
burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in
a spacious roundabout, that hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth;
and one empty arm of this jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of
a huzzar's surcoat. Hast seen the White Whale? See you this? and
withdrawing it from the fold that had hidden it, he held up a white arm of
sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like a mallet. Man my boat!
cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near him — Stand by to
lower! In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and
his crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the stranger.
But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the excitement of the
moment, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never once
stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was always by
an ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod,
and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment's
warning. Now, it is no very easy matter for anybody —except those who are
almost hourly used to it, like whalemen —to clamber up a ship's side from a
boat on the open sea; for the great swells now lift the boat high up towards
..
the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson.
so, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether
unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly reduced
to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height
he could hardly hope to attain. It has before been hinted, perhaps, that
every little untoward circumstance that befel him, and which indirectly
sprang from his luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated
Ahab. And in the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of
the two officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the
perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a pair
of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not seem to bethink
them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to use their sea
bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the strange
captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, I see, I see!
—avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle. As
good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two
previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive curved
blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. This was
quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his solitary
thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in the fluke of an
anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the word, held
himself fast, and at the same time also helped to hoist his own weight, by
pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of the tackle. Soon he
was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and gently landed upon the
capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in welcome, the other
captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his ivory leg, and crossing the ivory
arm (like two sword-fish blades) cried out in his walrus way, Aye, aye,
hearty! let us shake bones together! —an arm and a leg! —an arm that never
can shrink, d'ye see; and a leg that never can run. Where did'st thou see
the White Whale? —how long ago? The White Whale, said the Englishman,
pointing his ivory
..
arm towards the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a
telescope; There I saw him, on the Line, last season. And he took that
arm off, did he? asked Ahab, now sliding down from the capstan, and resting
on the Englishman's shoulder, as he did so. Aye, he was the cause of it, at
least; and that leg, too? Spin me the yarn, said Ahab; how was it? It
was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line, began the
Englishman. I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time. Well, one day
we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat fastened to one of
them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling and milling
round so, that my boat's crew could only trim dish, by sitting all their
sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea
a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows' feet and
wrinkles. It was he, it was he! cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his
suspended breath. And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin. Aye,
aye —they were mine — my irons, cried Ahab, exultingly — but on! Give me a
chance, then, said the Englishman, good-humoredly. Well, this old
great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod,
and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line. Aye, I see! —wanted to part
it; free the fast-fish —an old trick —I know him. How it was exactly,
continued the one-armed commander, I do not know; but in biting the line, it
got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow; but we didn't know it then; so
that when we afterwards pulled on the line, bounce we came plump on to his
hump! instead of the other whale's that went off to windward, all fluking.
Seeing how matters stood, and what a noble great whale it was —the noblest
and biggest I ever saw, sir, in my life —I resolved to capture him, spite of
the boiling rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would
get loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have
..
a devil of a boat's crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say,
I jumped into my first mate's boat —Mr. Mounttop's here (by the way, Captain
—Mounttop; Mounttop—the captain); —as I was saying, I jumped into Mounttop's
boat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching
the first harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look
you, sir —hearts and souls alive, man —the next instant, in a jiff, I was
blind as a bat —both eyes out —all befogged and bedeadened with black foam
—the whale's tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air,
like a marble steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at
midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say,
after the second iron, to toss it overboard —down comes the tail like a Lima
tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and, flukes
first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was all chips.
We all struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I seized hold of my
harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that like a sucking
fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at the same instant, the fish,
taking one good dart forwards, went down like a flash; and the barb of that
cursed second iron towing along near me caught me here (clapping his hand
just below his shoulder); yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me down
to Hell's flames, I was thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the
good God, the barb ript its way along the flesh —clear along the whole length
of my arm —came out nigh my wrist, and up i floated; —and that gentleman
there will tell you the rest (by the way, captain —Dr. Bunger, ship's
surgeon: Bunger, my lad, — the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part
of the yarn. The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had
been all the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to
denote his gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but
sober one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patched
trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between a marlingspike
he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other, occasionally casting
a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two crippled captains. But, at his
superior's introduction of him to Ahab, he
..
politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain's bidding. It was
a shocking bad wound, began the whale-surgeon; and, taking my advice,
Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy— Samuel Enderby is the name of
my ship, interrupted the one-armed captain, addressing Ahab; go on, boy.
Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing hot
weather there on the Line. But it was no use —I did all I could; sat up with
him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet— Oh, very
severe! chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly altering his voice,
Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till he couldn't see to put on
the bandages; and sending me to bed, half seas over, about three o'clock in
the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat up with me indeed, and was very severe
in my diet. Oh! a great watcher, and very dietetically severe, is Dr.
Bunger. (Bunger, you dog, laugh out! why don't ye? You know you're a
precious jolly rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I'd rather be killed by you
than kept alive by any other man. My captain, you must have ere this
perceived, respected sir —said the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger,
slightly bowing to Ahab — is apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many
clever things of that sort. But I may as well say —en passant, as the French
remark —that I myself —that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend
clergy —am a strict total abstinence man; I never drink— Water! cried the
captain; he never drinks it; it's a sort of fits to him; fresh water
throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on —go on with the arm story. Yes,
I may as well, said the surgeon, coolly. I was about observing, sir, before
Captain Boomer's facetious interruption, that spite of my best and severest
endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth was, sir, it
was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two feet and several
inches long. I measured it with the lead line. In short, it grew black; I
knew what was threatened, and off it came.
..
But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is against all
rule —pointing at it with the marlingspike — that is the captain's work,
not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had that club-hammer there
put to the end, to knock some one's brains out with, I suppose, as he tried
mine once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this
dent, sir —removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and exposing a
bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the slightest scarry trace,
or any token of ever having been a wound — Well, the captain there will tell
you how that came here; he knows. No, I don't, said the captain, but
his mother did; he was born with it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you —you Bunger!
was there ever such another Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you
die, you ought to die in pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future
ages, you rascal. What became of the White Whale? now cried Ahab, who
thus far had been impatiently listening to this bye-play between the two
Englishmen. Oh! cried the one-armed captain, Oh, yes! Well; after he
sounded, we didn't see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted,
I didn't then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till
some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby Dick
—as some call him —and then I knew it was he. Did'st thou cross his wake
again? Twice. But could not fasten? Didn't want to try to: ain't one
limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby
Dick doesn't bite so much as he swallows. Well, then, interrupted Bunger,
give him your left arm for bait to get the right. Do you know, gentlemen
—very gravely and mathematically bowing to each Captain in succession — Do
you know, gentlemen, that the digestive organs of the whale are so
inscrutably constructed by Divine Providence, that it is quite impossible for
him to completely digest even a
..
man's arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the White Whale's
malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb;
he only thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like the old
juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making believe
swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop into him in good earnest,
and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when I gave him an emetic,
and he heaved it up in small tacks, d'ye see. No possible way for him to
digest that jack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his general bodily
system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about it, and have a
mind to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to
the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only let the whale have
another chance at you shortly, that's all. No, thank ye, Bunger, said the
english captain, he's welcome to the arm he has, since I can't help it,
and didn't know him then; but not to another one. No more White Whales for
me; I've lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be
great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of
precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone; don't you think
so, Captain? —glancing at the ivory leg. He is. But he will still be
hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not
always what least allures. He's all a magnet! How long since thou saw'st him
last? Which way heading? Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend's,
cried Bunger, stoopingly walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely
snuffing; this man's blood —bring the thermometer; —it's at the boiling
point! —his pulse makes these planks beat! —sir! —taking a lancet from his
pocket, and drawing near to Ahab's arm. Avast! roared Ahab, dashing him
against the bulwarks — Man the boat! Which way heading? Good God! cried
the English Captain, to whom the question was put. What's the matter? He
was heading east, I think. —Is your Captain crazy? whispering Fedallah.
But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks
..
to take the boat's steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle
towards him, commanded the ship's sailors to stand by to lower. In a moment
he was standing in the boat's stern, and the Manilla men were springing to
their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With back to the
stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood upright till
alongside of the Pequod.
..






.. < chapter ci 10 THE DECANTER >
Ere the English ship fades from sight, be
it set down here, that she hailed from London, and was named after the late
Samuel Enderby, merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling
house of enderby and sons; a house which in my poor whaleman's opinion,
comes not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in
point of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord 0083
, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous fish-documents
do not make plain; but in that year (
) it fitted out the first English
ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale; though for some score of
years previous (ever since
) our valiant Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket
and the Vineyard had in large fleets pursued that Leviathan, but only in the
North and South Atlantic: not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here,
that the Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized
steel the great Sperm Whale; and that for half a century they were the only
people of the whole globe who so harpooned him. In
, a fine ship, the
Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose, and at the sole charge of the
vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape Horn, and was the first among the
nations to lower a whale-boat of any sort in the great South Sea. The
..
voyage was a skilful and lucky one; and returning to her berth with her hold
full of the precious sperm, the Amelia's example was soon followed by other
ships, English and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the
Pacific were thrown open. But not content with this good deed, the
indefatigable house again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons —how
many, their mother only knows —and under their immediate auspices, and
partly, I think, at their expense, the British government was induced to send
the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South Sea.
Commanded by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it,
and did some service; how much does not appear. But this is not all. In 0084
, the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on
a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan. That ship —well called the
Syren —made a noble experimental cruise; and it was thus that the great
Japanese Whaling Ground first became generally known. The Syren in this
famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer. All honor to
the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to the present day;
though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have slipped his cable for
the great South Sea of the other world. The ship named after him was worthy
of the honor, being a very fast sailer and a noble craft every way. I
boarded her once at midnight somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank
good flip down in the forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all
trumps —every soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And
that fine gam I had —long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with
his ivory heel — it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that
ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever lose
sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the
rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it's squally off
there by Patagonia), and all hands —visitors and all —were called to reef
topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in
bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into
..
the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning
example to all drunken tars. However, the masts did not go overboard; and by
and bye we scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip again,
though the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle, rather too
much diluted and pickled it to my taste. The beef was fine —tough, but with
body in it. They said it was bull-beef; others, that it was dromedary beef;
but i do not know, for certain, how that was. they had dumplings too; small,
but substantial, symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I
fancied that you could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were
swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their pitching
out of you like billiard-balls. The bread —but that couldn't be helped;
besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread contained the only
fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very light, and it was very
easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it. But all in all, taking
her from truck to helm, considering the dimensions of the cook's boilers,
including his own live parchment boilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel
Enderby was a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong;
crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-band. But why was it,
think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other English whalers I know of
—not all though —were such famous, hospitable ships; that passed round the
beef, and the bread, and the can, and the joke; and were not soon weary
of eating, and drinking, and laughing? I will tell you. The abounding good
cheer of these English whalers is matter for historical research. Nor have I
been at all sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed needed.
The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders, Zealanders,
and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant in the fishery;
and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching plenty to eat and
drink. For, as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew;
but not so the English whaler. Hence, in the English, this thing of whaling
good cheer is not normal and natural, but incidental and particular; and,
therefore, must have some special origin,
..
which is here pointed out, and will be still further elucidated. During my
researches in the leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch
volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about
whalers. The title was, Dan Coopman, wherefore I concluded that this must
be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every
whale ship must carry its cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing
that it was the production of one Fitz Swackhammer. But my friend Dr.
Snodhead, a very learned man, professor of Low Dutch and High German in the
college of Santa Claus and St. Pott's, to whom I handed the work for
translation, giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble — this same
Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured me that Dan Coopman did
not mean The Cooper, but The Merchant. In short, this ancient and
learned Low Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland; and, among other
subjects, contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery. And in
this chapter it was, headed Smeer, or Fat, that I found a long detailed
list of the outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen;
from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead. I transcribe the following: 0084400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock fish.
550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins of butter.
20,000 lbs. of Texel and Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an
inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of beer. Most
statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in the present
case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes, barrels, quarts,
and gills of good gin and good cheer. At the time, I devoted three days to
the studious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many
profound
..
thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental
and Platonic application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables
of my own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by
every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale
fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and Leyden
cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their naturally
unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their
vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar
Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivial
natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil. The quantity of beer, too,
is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now, as those polar fisheries could only be
prosecuted in the short summer of that climate, so that the whole cruise of
one of these Dutch whalemen, including the short voyage to and from the
Spitzbergen sea, did not much exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men
to each of their fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all;
therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a
twelve weeks' allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers
of gin. Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might
fancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a boat's
head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem somewhat
improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But this was very
far North, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with the constitution;
upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would be apt to make the
harpooneer sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss
might ensue to Nantucket and New Bedford. But no more; enough has been said
to show that the old Dutch whalers of two or three centuries ago were high
livers; and that the English whalers have not neglected so excellent an
example. For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get
nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And
this empties the decanter.
..






.. < chapter cii 2 A BOWER IN THE ARSACIDES >
Hitherto, in descriptively
treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his
outer aspect; or separately and in detail upon some few interior structural
features. But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it
behoves me now to unbutton him still further, and untagging the points of his
hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of
the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that
is to say, in his unconditional skeleton. But how now, Ishmael? How is it,
that you, a mere oarsman in the fishery, pretend to know aught about the
subterranean parts of the whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your
capstan, deliver lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the
windlass, hold up a specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael.
Can you land a full-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook
dishes a roast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been,
Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone; the
privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters, ridge-pole,
sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-work of leviathan; and
belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and cheeseries in his
bowels. I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far
beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed with
an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged to, a small
cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or bag, to
make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the heads of the lances.
Think you I let that chance go, without using my boat-hatchet and
jack-knife, and breaking the seal and reading all the contents of that young
cub?
..
And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their gigantic,
full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted to my late
royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides. For being at
Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey of Algiers, I was
invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque, at
his retired palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side glen not very far distant from
what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital. Among many other fine
qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted with a devout love for all
matters of barbaric vertu, had brought together in Pupella whatever rare
things the more ingenious of his people could invent; chiefly carved woods of
wonderful devices, chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles,
aromatic canoes; and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders,
the wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores. Chief
among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an unusually long
raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his head against a
cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings seemed his verdant jet.
When the vast body had at last been stripped of its fathom-deep enfoldings,
and the bones become dust dry in the sun, then the skeleton was carefully
transported up the Pupella glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now
sheltered it. The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebrae were carved
with Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests
kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again sent
forth its vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lower jaw
vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword that so affrighted
damocles. it was a wondrous sight. the wood was green as mosses of the icy
Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the
industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous carpet on
it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and the
living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden branches;
all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying air; all
..
these unceasingly were active. Through the lacings of the leaves, the great
sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver!
unseen weaver! —pause! —one word! — whither flows the fabric? what palace may
it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver! —stay thy
hand! — but one single word with thee! Nay —the shuttle flies —the figures
float from forth the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away.
The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears
no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are
deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that
speak through it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken
words that are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are
plainly heard without the walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby
have villanies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all
this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard
afar. Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the
great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging —a gigantic idler! Yet, as the
ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him, the mighty
idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over with the vines;
every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life
folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life,
and begat him curly-headed glories. Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited
this wondrous whale, and saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke
ascending from where the real jet had issued, I marvelled that the king
should regard a chapel as an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I
marvelled that the priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To
and fro I paced before this skeleton —brushed the vines aside —broke through
the ribs —and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid
its many winding, shaded collonades and arbors. But soon my line was out;
and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered. I saw no
living thing within; naught was there but bones.
..
Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the skeleton.
From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me taking the
altitude of the final rib. How now! they shouted; Dar'st thou measure
this our god! That's for us. Aye, priests —well, how long do ye make him,
then? But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them, concerning feet and
inches; they cracked each other's sconces with their yard-sticks — the great
skull echoed —and seizing that lucky chance, I quickly concluded my own
admeasurements. These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But
first, be it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any
fancied measurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can
refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell me,
in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where they have
some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise, I have heard
that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have what the
proprietors call the only perfect specimen of a Greenland or River Whale in
the United States. Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, England, Burton
constable by name, a certain sir clifford constable has in his possession the
skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no means of the
full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo's. In both cases, the stranded
whales to which these two skeletons belonged, were originally claimed by
their proprietors upon similar grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he
wanted it; and Sir Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those
parts. Sir Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a
great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony cavities
—spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan —and swing all day upon his lower
jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and shutters; and a
footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side.
Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery
in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his
cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead. The
skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are
..
copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild
wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such
valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other
parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then composing —at
least, what untattooed parts might remain —I did not trouble myself with the
odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a congenial
admeasurement of the whale.
..






.. < chapter ciii 10 MEASUREMENT OF THE WHALE'S SKELETON >
In the first
place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain statement, touching the
living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton we are briefly to exhibit.
Such a statement may prove useful here. According to a careful calculation I
have made, and which I partly base upon Captain Scoresby's estimate, of
seventy tons for the largest sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length;
according to my careful calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest
magnitude, between eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less
than forty feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at
least ninety tons; so that reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would
considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one
thousand one hundred inhabitants. Think you not then that brains, like yoked
cattle, should be put to this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any
landsman's imagination? Having already in various ways put before you his
skull, spout-hole, jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts,
I shall now simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of
his unobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very large a
proportion of the entire extent
..
of the skeleton; as it is by far the most complicated part; and as nothing
is to be repeated concerning it in this chapter, you must not fail to carry
it in your mind, or under your arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not
gain a complete notion of the general structure we are about to view. In
length, the Sperm Whale's skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-two feet; so
that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have been ninety feet
long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one fifth in length
compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two feet, his skull and jaw
comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty feet of plain back-bone.
Attached to this back-bone, for something less than a third of its length,
was the mighty circular basket of ribs which once enclosed his vitals. To me
this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine, extending far
away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled the hull of a great
ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some twenty of her naked bow-ribs are
inserted, and the keel is otherwise, for the time, but a long, disconnected
timber. The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck, was
nearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each successively
longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one of the middle ribs,
which measured eight feet and some inches. From that part, the remaining
ribs diminished, till the tenth and last only spanned five feet and some
inches. In general thickness, they all bore a seemly correspondence to their
length. The middle ribs were the most arched. In some of the Arsacides they
are used for beams whereon to lay foot-path bridges over small streams. In
considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the circumstance,
so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale is by no
means the mould of his invested form. The largest of the Tranque ribs, one
of the middle ones, occupied that part of the fish which, in life, is greatest
in depth. Now, the greatest depth of the invested body of this particular
whale must have been at least sixteen feet; whereas, the corresponding rib
measured but little more than eight feet. So that this rib only conveyed half
of the true notion of the living
..
magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where I now saw but a naked
spine, all that had been once wrapped round with tons of added bulk in flesh,
muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here saw but a
few disordered joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic, but boneless
flukes, an utter blank! How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid
untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely
poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood.
no. only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of
his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested
whale be truly and livingly found out. But the spine. For that, the best way
we can consider it is, with a crane, to pile its bones high up on end. No
speedy enterprise. But now it's done, it looks much like Pompey's Pillar.
There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are not
locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic
spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one, is
in width something less than three feet, and in depth more than four. The
smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in
width, and looks something like a white billiard-ball. I was told that there
were still smaller ones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal
urchins, the priest's children, who had stolen them to play marbles with.
Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off
at last into simple child's play.
..






.. < chapter civ 30 THE FOSSIL WHALE >
From his mighty bulk the whale
affords a most congenial theme whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generally
expatiate. Would you, you could not compress him. By good rights he
..
should only be treated of in imperial folio. Not to tell over again his
furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about the waist;
only think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in
him like great cables and hausers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck
of a line-of-battle-ship. Since I have undertaken to manhandle this
Leviathan, it behoves me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the
enterprise; not overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and
spinning him out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described
him in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now
remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian
point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan —to an ant or
a flea —such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent.
But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to
this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it
said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of
these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson,
expressly purchased for that purpose; because that famous lexicographer's
uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a
whale author like me. One often hears of writers that rise and swell with
their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me,
writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard
capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand!
Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this
Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching
comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the
sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past,
present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth,
and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so
magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its
bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a
..
mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea,
though many there be who have tried it. Ere entering upon the subject of
Fossil Whales, I present my credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my
miscellaneous time i have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of
ditches, canals, and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts.
Likewise, by way of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while
in the earlier geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now
almost completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in what are
called the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at any rate
intercepted links, between the antichronical creatures, and those whose
remote posterity are said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil Whales
hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period, which is the last
preceding the superficial formations. And though none of them precisely
answer to any known species of the present time, they are yet sufficiently
akin to them in general respects, to justify their taking ranks as Cetacean
fossils. Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their
bones and skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various intervals,
been found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England, in
Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Among the
more curious of such remains is part of a skull, which in the year
was
disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris, a short street opening almost
directly upon the palace of the Tuileries; and bones disinterred in
excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's time. Cuvier pronounced
these fragments to have belonged to some utterly unknown Leviathanic species.
But by far the most wonderful of all cetacean relics was the almost complete
vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year
, on the
plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken credulous slaves in
the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen angels. The Alabama
doctors declared it a huge reptile, and bestowed upon it the name of
Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of it being taken across the sea to
owen, the english anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile was a
whale, though of a departed species.
..
A significant illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in this book,
that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape of his
fully invested body. So Owen rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his
paper read before the London Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance,
one of the most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have
blotted out of existence. When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons,
skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial
resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time
bearing on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical
Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that
wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for time began
with man. Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering
glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed
hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this
world's circumference, not an inhabitable hand's breadth of land was visible.
Then the whole world was the whale's; and, king of creation, he left his
wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a
pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than the
Pharaoh's. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with
Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the
unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time, must
needs exist after all humane ages are over. But not alone has this Leviathan
left his pre-adamite traces in the stereotype plates of nature, and in
limestone and marl bequeathed his ancient bust; but upon Egyptian tablets,
whose antiquity seems to claim for them an almost fossiliferous character, we
find the unmistakable print of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple
of Denderah, some fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite
ceiling a sculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs,
griffins, and dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial
globe of the moderns. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was
there swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon was cradled.
..
Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity of the
whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down by the venerable
John Leo, the old Barbary traveller. Not far from the Sea-side, they have a
Temple, the Rafters and Beams of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales
of a monstrous size are oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common
People imagine, that by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the Temple, no
Whale can pass it without immediate death. But the truth of the Matter is,
that on either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles into
the Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon 'em. They keep a Whale's
Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the Ground with
its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which cannot be
reached by a Man upon a Camel's Back. This Rib (says John Leo) is said to
have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their Historians affirm,
that a Prophet who prophesy'd of Mahomet, came from this Temple, and some do
not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale at
the Base of the Temple. In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you,
reader, and if you be a Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship
there.
..






.. < chapter cv 24 DOES THE WHALE'S MAGNITUDE DIMINISH? WILL HE PERISH? >
Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from the
head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether, in the
long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the original bulk
of his sires. But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of
the present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are found
in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct geological period prior to man),
but of the whales found in that
..
Tertiary system, those belonging to its latter formations exceed in size
those of its earlier ones. Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far
the largest is the Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was
less than seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have already
seen, that the tape-measure gives seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a
large sized modern whale. And I have heard, on whalemen's authority, that
Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feet long at the time of
capture. But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an
advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods; may it
not be, that since Adam's time they have degenerated? Assuredly, we must
conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of such gentlemen as Pliny,
and the ancient naturalists generally. For Pliny tells us of whales that
embraced acres of living bulk, and Aldrovandus of others which measured eight
hundred feet in length —Rope Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in
the days of Banks and Solander, Cooke's naturalists, we find a Danish member
of the Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales
(reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and twenty yards; that
is, three hundred and sixty feet. And Lacepede, the French naturalist, in his
elaborate history of whales, in the very beginning of his work (page 3),
sets down the Right Whale at one hundred metres, three hundred and
twenty-eight feet. And this work was published so late as A. D.
. But
will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of to-day is as big
as his ancestors in Pliny's time. And if ever I go where Pliny is, I, a
whaleman (more than he was), will make bold to tell him so. Because I
cannot understand how it is, that while the Egyptian mummies that were buried
thousands of years before even Pliny was born, do not measure so much in
their coffins as a modern Kentuckian in his socks; and while the cattle and
other animals sculptured on the oldest Egyptian and Nineveh tablets, by the
relative proportions in which they are drawn, just as plainly prove that the
high-bred, stall-fed, prize cattle of Smithfield, not only equal, but far
exceed in magnitude the fattest of Pharaoh's fat kine; in the face of
..
all this, I will not admit that of all animals the whale alone should have
degenerated. But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the
more recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient
look-outs at the mast-heads of the whale-ships, now penetrating even through