Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/H.Melville/moby.74

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.. < chapter lxxiv 7  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.
.. <p 328 >
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
.. <p 329 >
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
.. <p 330 >
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
.. <p 331 >
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.
.. <p 331 >