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- flesh, on the lower part of the bunch before described. But as the
stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured
whales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence
of any kind to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have
been some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account for
the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a
lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron,
the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And
when? It might have been darted by some Nor’ West Indian long before
America was discovered.
What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous
cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further
discoveries, by the ship’s being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways
to the sea, owing to the body’s immensely increasing tendency to sink.
However, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to
the last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the
ship would have been capsized, if still persisting in locking arms with
the body; then, when the command was given to break clear from it, such
was the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to which the
fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that it was impossible to cast
them off. Meantime everything in the Pequod was aslant. To cross to the
other side of the deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a
house. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her
bulwarks and cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural
dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the
immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so
low had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at
all approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed
added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point of going
over.
“Hold on, hold on, won’t ye?” cried Stubb to the body, “don’t be in
such a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do something
or go for it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your handspikes,
and run one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and cut the big
chains.”
“Knife? Aye, aye,” cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter’s heavy
hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began slashing
at the largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of sparks, were
given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest. With a terrific
snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted, the carcase sank.
Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm
Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately
accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great
buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the
surface. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and
broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all their
bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert that
this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so
sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But it
is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling with
noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm flush and May of
life, with all their panting lard about them; even these brawny,
buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.
Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this
accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty
Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt imputable
in no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale;
his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton; from this
incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there are instances
where, after the lapse of many hours or several days, the sunken whale
again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this is
obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious
magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle ship
could hardly keep him under then. In the Shore Whaling, on soundings,
among the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right Whale gives token of
sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty of rope; so that when
the body has gone down, they know where to look for it when it shall
have ascended again.
It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from
the Pequod’s mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again
lowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a
Fin-Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of
its incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back’s spout is
so similar to the Sperm Whale’s, that by unskilful fishermen it is
often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were
now in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all
sail, made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared
far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.
Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.
CHAPTER 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling.
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the
true method.
The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up
to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its
great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many
great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other
have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection
that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a
fraternity.
The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to
the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale
attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent.
Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms
to succor the distressed, and not to fill men’s lamp-feeders. Every one
knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely
Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast,
and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the
prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and
delivered and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit,
rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as
this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt
this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian
coast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast
skeleton of a whale, which the city’s legends and all the inhabitants
asserted to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew.
When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in
triumph. What seems most singular and suggestively important in this
story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.
Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda—indeed, by some supposed
to be indirectly derived from it—is that famous story of St. George and
the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many
old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and
often stand for each other. “Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a
dragon of the sea,” saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in
truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it
would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but
encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle
with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only
a Perseus, a St.