CHAPTER 57

  Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in

Mountains; in Stars

  On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen

a crippled beggar (or kedger, as the sailors say) holding a painted

board before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his

leg. There are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats

(presumed to contain the missing leg in all its original integrity) is

being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten

years, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and

exhibited that stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his

justification has now come. His three whales are as good whales as

were ever published in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as

unquestionable a stump as any you will find in the western

clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a

stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes,

stands ruefully contemplating his own amputation.

  Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford,

and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and

whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm

Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and

other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous

little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the

rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have

little boxes of dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for

the skrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil with their

jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the

sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a

mariner's fancy.

  Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a

man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called

savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I

myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the

Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.

  Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his

domestic hours, is his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient

Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and

elaboration of carving, is as great a trophy of human perseverance

as a Latin lexicon. For, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a

shark's tooth, that miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been

achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady application.

  As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With

the same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's

tooth, of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone

sculpture, not quite as workmanlike, but as close packed in its

maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield; and full

of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine

Dutch savage, Albert Durer.

  Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark

slabs of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in

the forecastles of American whalers. Some of them are done with much

accuracy.

  At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales

hung by the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter

is sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking

whales are seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some

old-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for

weathercocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all

intents and purposes so labelled with "Hands off!" you cannot

examine them closely enough to decide upon their merit.

  In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high

broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon

the plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of

the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks

against them in a surf of green surges.

  Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is

continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from

some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the

profiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must

be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if

you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take

the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first

stand-point, else so chance-like are such observations of the hills,

that your precise, previous stand-point would require a laborious

re-discovery; like the Soloma islands, which still remain incognita,

though once high-ruffled Mendanna trod them and old Figuera chronicled

them.

  Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace

out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of

them; as when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw

armies locked in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I

chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of

the bright points that first defined him to me. And beneath the

effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined

the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of

Hydrus and the Flying Fish.

  With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of

harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the

topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens with all their

countless tents really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight!