CHAPTER 74

  The Sperm Whale's Head - Contrasted View

  Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us

join them, and lay together our own.

  Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the

Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales

regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two

extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external

difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as

a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's side; and as

we may freely go from one to the other, by merely stepping across

the deck:- where, I should like to know, will you obtain a better

chance to study practical cetology than here?

  In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between

these heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but, there

is a certain mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the

Right Whale's sadly lacks. There is more character in the Sperm

Whale's head. As you behold it, you involuntarily yield the immense

superiority to him, in point of pervading dignity. In the present

instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and salt color

of his head at the summit, giving token of advanced age and large

experience. In short, he is what the fishermen technically call a

"grey-headed whale."

  Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads- namely, the

two most important organs, the eye and the ear. Far back on the side

of the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale's jaw, if

you narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you

would fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of all proportion is it

to the magnitude of the head.

  Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale's eyes, it

is plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no

more than he can one exactly astern. In a word, the position of the

whale's eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears; and you may fancy,

for yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey

objects through your ears. You would find that you could only

command some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight

side-line of sight; and about thirty more behind it. If your bitterest

foe were walking straight towards you, with dagger uplifted in broad

day, you would not be able to see him, any more than if he were

stealing upon you from behind. In a word, you would have two backs, so

to speak; but, at the same time, also, two fronts (side fronts): for

what is it that makes the front of a man- what, indeed, but his eyes?

  Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the

eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so

as to produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar

position of the whale's eyes, effectually divided as they are by

many cubic feet of solid head, which towers between them like a

great mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of course,

must wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ

imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this

side, and another distinct picture on that side; while all between

must be profound darkness and nothingness to him. Man may, in

effect, be said to look out on the world from a sentry-box with two

joined sashes for his window. But with the whale, these two sashes are

separately inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly

impairing the view. This peculiarity of the whale's eyes is a thing

always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the

reader in some subsequent scenes.

  A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning

this visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content

with a hint. So long as a man's eyes are open in the light, the act of

seeing is involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically

seeing whatever objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one's

experience will teach him, that though he can take in an

undiscriminating sweep of things at one glance, it is quite impossible

for him, attentively, and completely, to examine any two things-

however large or however small- at one and the same instant of time;

never mind if they lie side by side and touch each other. But if you

now come to separate these two objects, and surround each by a

circle of profound darkness; then, in order to see one of them, in

such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will be

utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness. How is it,

then, with the whale? True, both his eyes, in themselves, must

simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more comprehensive,

combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the same moment of

time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one side of

him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he can, then

is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able

simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct

problems in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any

incongruity in this comparison.

  It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the

extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when

beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer

frights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly

proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their

divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve them.

  But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are

an entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two

heads for hours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no

external leaf whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert

a quill, so wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind

the eye. With respect to their ears, this important difference is to

be observed between the sperm whale and the right. While the ears of

the former has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and

evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible

from without.

  Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see

the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear

which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens

of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches

of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper

of hearing? Not at all.- Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind?

Subtilize it.

  Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand,

cant over the sperm whale's head, so, that it may lie bottom up; then,

ascending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and

were it not that the body is now completely separated from it, with

a lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his

stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us

where we are. What a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from

floor to ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a glistening white

membrane, glossy as bridal satins.

  But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems

like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at

one end, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it

overhead, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific

portcullis; and such, alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the

fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force. But far more

terrible is it to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see some

sulky whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some

fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his

body; for all the world like a ship's jibboom. This whale is not dead;

he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so

supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there

in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who

must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon him.

  In most cases this lower jaw- being easily unhinged by a practised

artist- is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of

extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white

whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious

articles including canes, umbrellasticks, and handles to riding-whips.

  With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it

were an anchor; and when the proper time comes- some few days after

the other work- Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished

dentists, are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade,

Queequeg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts,

and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as

Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild woodlands. There are

generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but

undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw is

afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building

houses.