CHAPTER 75

  The Right Whale's Head - Contrasted View

  Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the the Right

Whale's head.

  As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared

to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly

rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather

inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred

years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a

shoemaker's last. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the

nursery tale with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be

lodged, she and all her progeny.

  But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume

different aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on

its summit and look at these two f-shaped spout-holes, you would

take the whole head for an enormous bass viol, and these spiracles,

the apertures in its soundingboard. Then, again, if you fix your eye

upon this strange, crested, comblike incrustation on the top of the

mass- this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the

"crown," and the Southern fishers the "bonnet" of the Right Whale;

fixing your eyes solely on this, you would take the head for the trunk

of some huge oak, with a bird's nest in its crotch. At any rate,

when you watch those live crabs that nestle here on this bonnet,

such an idea will be almost sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your

fancy has been fixed by the technical term "crown" also bestowed

upon it; in which case you will take great interest in thinking how

this mighty monster is actually a diademed king of the sea, whose

green crown has been put together for him in this marvellous manner.

But if this whale be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to

grace a diadem. Look at that hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk and

pout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter's measurement, about

twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and pout that will yield

you some 500 gallons of oil and more.

  A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be

hare-lipped. The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother

during an important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when

earthquakes caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a

slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I

at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian

wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is about

twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a

regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides,

present us with those wondrous, half vertical, scimitar-shaped slats

of whalebone, say three hundred on a side, which depending from the

upper part of the head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which

have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges of these bones

are fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains

the water, and in whose intricacies he retains the small fish, when

openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the

central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there

are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some

whalemen calculate the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its

circular rings. Though the certainty of this criterion is far from

demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical probability. At any

rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater age to the

Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable.

  In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious

fancies concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the

wondrous "whiskers" inside of the whale's mouth;* another, "hogs'

bristles"; a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following

elegant language: "There are about two hundred and fifty fins

growing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over his tongue

on each side of his mouth."

  *This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of

whisker, or rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white

hairs on the upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes

these tufts impart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise

solemn countenance.

  As every one knows, these same "hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers,"

"blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks

and other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the

demand has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne's time

that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the

fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the

jaws of the whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like

thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for

protection; the umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.

  But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and,

standing in the Right Whale's mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing

all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you

not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing

upon its thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of

the softest Turkey- the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the

floor of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in

pieces in hoisting it on deck. This particular tongue now before us;

at a passing glance I should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it

will yield you about that amount of oil.

  Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started

with- that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely

different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no

great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender

mandible of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm

Whale are there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and

scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external

spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.

  Look your last now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they

yet lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea;

the other will not be very long in following.

  Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the

same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead

seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a

prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to

death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower

lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to

embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous

practical resolution facing death? This Right Whale I take to have

been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up

Spinoza in his latter years.