CHAPTER 102

  A Bower in the Arsacides

  Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have

chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately

and in detail upon some few interior structural features. But to a

large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it behooves me now

to unbutton him still further, and untagging the points of his hose,

unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of

the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his

ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton.

  But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the

fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the

whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver

lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass,

hold up a specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can

you land a full-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook

dishes a roast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you

hitherto been, Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of

Jonah alone; the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams;

the rafters, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the

frame-work of leviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms,

butteries, and cheeseries in his bowels.

  I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far

beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed

with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I

belonged to, a small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the

deck for his poke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the

harpoons, and for the heads of the lances. Think you I let the

chance go, without using my boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and

breaking the seal and reading all the contents of that young cub?

  And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their

gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am

indebted to my late royal friend Tranque, king of Tranque, one of

the Arsacides. For being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the

trading-ship Dey of Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the

Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque, at his retired palm

villa at Pupella; a sea-side glen not very far distant from what our

sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital.

  Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being

gifted with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had

brought together in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of

his people could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices,

chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes;

and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the

wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores.

  Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an

unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his

head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings

seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been stripped

of its fathomdeep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the

sun, then the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella

glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.

  The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebrae were carved with

Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests

kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head

again sent forth its vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough,

the terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the

hair-hung sword that so affrighted Damocles.

  It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy

Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap;

the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a

gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the

warp and woof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with

all their laden branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses;

the message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. Through

the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle

weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!-

pause!- one word!- whither flows the fabric? what palace may it

deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!- stay thy

hand!- but one single word with thee! Nay- the shuttle flies- the

figures float from forth the loom; the fresher-rushing carpet for ever

slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he

deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too,

who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we

hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in

all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among

the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the

walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby have villainies

been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din

of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard

afar.

  Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the

great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging- a gigantic idler! Yet,

as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around

him, the mighty idler seemed the sunning weaver; himself all woven

over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure;

but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the

grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.

  Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and

saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from

where the real jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard

a chapel as an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled

that the priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To

and fro I paced before this skeleton- brushed the vine aside- broke

through the ribs- and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered,

eddied long amid its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbors. But

soon my line was out; and following back, I emerged from the opening

where I entered. I saw no living thing within; naught was there but

bones.

  Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the

skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me

taking the altitude of the final rib, "How now!" they shouted; "Dar'st

thou measure this our god! That's for us." "Aye, priests- well, how

long do ye make him, then?" But hereupon a fierce contest rose among

them, concerning feet and inches; they cracked each other's sconces

with their yard-sticks- the great skull echoed- and seizing that lucky

chance, I quickly concluded my own admeasurements.

  These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first,

be it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any

fancied measurements I please. Because there are skeleton

authorities you can refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a

Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, in Hull, England, one of the whaling

ports of that country, where they have some fine specimens of

fin-backs and other whales. Likewise, have heard that in the museum of

Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have what the proprietors call "the

only perfect specimen of a Greenland or River Whale in the United

States." Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, England, Burton

Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford Constable has in his

possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by

no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo's.

  In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons

belonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar

grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir

Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir

Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a

great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony

cavities- spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan- and swing all day

upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors

and shutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a

bunch of keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence

for a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal column;

threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; and

sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead.

  The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied

verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild

wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving

such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished

the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was

then composing- at least, what untattooed parts might remain- I did

not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches

at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.