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- top of his head? Avast, will ye!”
“Stand clear of the tackle!” cried a voice like the bursting of a
rocket.
Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass
dropped into the sea, like Niagara’s Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the
suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering
copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging—now over the
sailors’ heads, and now over the water—Daggoo, through a thick mist of
spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor,
buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the
sea! But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked
figure with a boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen
hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my
brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the
side, and every eye counted every ripple, as moment followed moment,
and no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands
now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the
ship.
“Ha! ha!” cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch
overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm thrust
upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust
forth from the grass over a grave.
“Both! both!—it is both!”—cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout; and
soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand, and
with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into the
waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was
long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.
Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the
slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side
lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then
dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards,
and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first
thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that
was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;—he had
thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a
somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in
the good old way—head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was
doing as well as could be expected.
And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of
Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was
successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and
apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be
forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing
and boxing, riding and rowing.
I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header’s will be sure to
seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have
either seen or heard of some one’s falling into a cistern ashore; an
accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too than
the Indian’s, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the
Sperm Whale’s well.
But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We thought
the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and
most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in an element of
a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee there. Not at
all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in, the case had
been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving little but the
dense tendinous wall of the well—a double welded, hammered substance,
as I have before said, much heavier than the sea water, and a lump of
which sinks in it like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid sinking
in this substance was in the present instance materially counteracted
by the other parts of the head remaining undetached from it, so that it
sank very slowly and deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair
chance for performing his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say.
Yes, it was a running delivery, so it was.
Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious
perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant
spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber
and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be
recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey
in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that
leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How
many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and
sweetly perished there?
CHAPTER 79. The Prairie.
To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this
Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has
as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful as
for Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar,
or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the Dome of the
Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not only treats of
the various faces of men, but also attentively studies the faces of
horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells in detail upon the
modifications of expression discernible therein. Nor have Gall and his
disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touching the
phrenological characteristics of other beings than man. Therefore,
though I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in the application of
these two semi-sciences to the whale, I will do my endeavor. I try all
things; I achieve what I can.
Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous creature. He
has no proper nose. And since the nose is the central and most
conspicuous of the features; and since it perhaps most modifies and
finally controls their combined expression; hence it would seem that
its entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely affect
the countenance of the whale. For as in landscape gardening, a spire,
cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable
to the completion of the scene; so no face can be physiognomically in
keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose. Dash the
nose from Phidias’s marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder!
Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all his
proportions are so stately, that the same deficiency which in the
sculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no blemish at all. Nay, it is
an added grandeur. A nose to the whale would have been impertinent. As
on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast head in your
jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted by the
reflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilent conceit, which
so often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the mightiest
royal beadle on his throne.
In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view to
be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head. This
aspect is sublime.
In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the
morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull has
a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles,
the elephant’s brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is
as that great golden seal affixed by the German emperors to their
decrees. It signifies—“God: done this day by my hand.” But in most
creatures, nay in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip
of alpine land lying along the snow line.