Chapter LXXIV: 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 color
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, so 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 a 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.