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- whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become
mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth
exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling will
calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two
different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment,
be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;—even so
did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at
us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight.
Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One
of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a
day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six
feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed
scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so lately
occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready
for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar’s bow.
The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly
retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby’s ears newly arrived
from foreign parts.
“Line! line!” cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; “him fast! him
fast!—Who line him! Who struck?—Two whale; one big, one little!”
“What ails ye, man?” cried Starbuck.
“Look-e here,” said Queequeg, pointing down.
As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds
of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and
shows the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling
towards the air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord
of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to
its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this
natural line, with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the
hempen one, so that the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest
secrets of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We
saw young Leviathan amours in the deep.*
*The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan, but
unlike most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a
gestation which may probably be set down at nine months, producing but
one at a time; though in some few known instances giving birth to an
Esau and Jacob:—a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats,
curiously situated, one on each side of the anus; but the breasts
themselves extend upwards from that. When by chance these precious
parts in a nursing whale are cut by the hunter’s lance, the mother’s
pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolour the sea for rods. The milk
is very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well
with strawberries. When overflowing with mutual esteem, the whales
salute _more hominum_.
And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and
affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and
fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled
in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of
my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm;
and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down
and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.
Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic
spectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats,
still engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host; or
possibly carrying on the war within the first circle, where abundance
of room and some convenient retreats were afforded them. But the sight
of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting to and fro
across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our eyes. It is
sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly powerful
and alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or
maiming his gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by darting a short-handled
cutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for hauling it back again. A
whale wounded (as we afterwards learned) in this part, but not
effectually, as it seemed, had broken away from the boat, carrying
along with him half of the harpoon line; and in the extraordinary agony
of the wound, he was now dashing among the revolving circles like the
lone mounted desperado Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga, carrying
dismay wherever he went.
But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling
spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed
to inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at first
the intervening distance obscured from us. But at length we perceived
that by one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery, this whale
had become entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed; he had also run
away with the cutting-spade in him; and while the free end of the rope
attached to that weapon, had permanently caught in the coils of the
harpoon-line round his tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked loose
from his flesh. So that tormented to madness, he was now churning
through the water, violently flailing with his flexible tail, and
tossing the keen spade about him, wounding and murdering his own
comrades.
This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their
stationary fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake
began to crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted by
half spent billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly to
heave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished;
in more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more central
circles began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, the long calm was
departing. A low advancing hum was soon heard; and then like to the
tumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river Hudson breaks up in
Spring, the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner
centre, as if to pile themselves up in one common mountain. Instantly
Starbuck and Queequeg changed places; Starbuck taking the stern.
“Oars! Oars!” he intensely whispered, seizing the helm—“gripe your
oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove him off,
you Queequeg—the whale there!—prick him!—hit him! Stand up—stand up,
and stay so! Spring, men—pull, men; never mind their backs—scrape
them!—scrape away!”
The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks, leaving a
narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by desperate
endeavor we at last shot into a temporary opening; then giving way
rapidly, and at the same time earnestly watching for another outlet.
After many similar hair-breadth escapes, we at last swiftly glided into
what had just been one of the outer circles, but now crossed by random
whales, all violently making for one centre. This lucky salvation was
cheaply purchased by the loss of Queequeg’s hat, who, while standing in
the bows to prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken clean from his
head by the air-eddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of broad
flukes close by.
Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it soon
resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement; for having
clumped together at last in one dense body, they then renewed their
onward flight with augmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless;
but the boats still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged
whales might be dropped astern, and likewise to secure one which Flask
had killed and waifed.