CHAPTER 85

  The Fountain

  That for six thousand years- and no one knows how many millions of

ages before- the great whales should have been spouting all over the

sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so

many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries

back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of

the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings- that all this

should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a

quarter minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of

December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether

these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapor-

this is surely a noteworthy thing.

  Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items

contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their

gills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all

times is combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a

herring or a cod might live a century, and never once raise its head

above the surface. But owing to his marked internal structure which

gives him regular lungs, like a human being's, the whale can only live

by inhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the

necessity for his periodical visits to the upper world. But he

cannot in any degree breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary

attitude, the Sperm Whale's mouth is buried at least eight feet

beneath the surface; and what is still more, his windpipe has no

connexion with his mouth. No, he breathes through his spiracle

alone; and this is on the top of his head.

  If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function

indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a

certain element, which being subsequently brought into contact with

the blood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think

I shall err; though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific

words. Assume it, and it follows that if all the blood in a man

could be aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his nostrils

and not fetch another for a considerable time. That is to say, he

would then live without breathing. Anomalous as it may seem, this is

precisely the case with the whale, who systematically lives, by

intervals, his full hour and more (when at the bottom) without drawing

a single breath, or so much as in any way inhaling a particle of

air; for, remember, he has no gills. How is this? Between his ribs and

on each side of his spine he is supplied with a remarkable involved

Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he

quits the surface, are completely distended with oxygenated blood.

So that for an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries

a surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camel crossing the

waterless desert carries a surplus supply of drink for future use in

its four supplementary stomachs. The anatomical fact of this labyrinth

is indisputable; and that the supposition founded upon it is

reasonable and true, seems the more cogent to me, when I consider

the otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in having his

spoutings out, as the fishermen phrase it. This is what I mean. If

unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will

continue there for a period of time exactly uniform with all his other

unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets seventy

times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he rises

again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to a

minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him, so

that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good his

regular allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are told,

will he finally go down to stay out his full term below. Remark,

however, that in different individuals these rates are different;

but in any one they are alike. Now, why should the whale thus insist

upon having his spoutings out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir

of air, ere descending for good? How obvious it is too, that this

necessity for the whale's rising exposes him to all the fatal

hazards of the chase. And not by hook or by net could this vast

leviathan be caught, when sailing a thousand fathoms beneath the

sunlight. Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the great

necessities that strike the victory to thee!

  In man, breathing is incessantly going on- one breath only serving

for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to

attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will. But

the Sperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday of his time.

  It has been said that the whale only breathes through his

spout-hole; if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are

mixed with water, then I opine we should be furnished with the

reason why his sense of smell seems obliterated in him; for the only

thing about him that at all answers to his nose is that identical

spout-hole; and being so clogged with two elements, it could not be

expected to have the power of smelling. But owing to the mystery of

the spout- whether it be water or whether it be vapor- no absolute

certainty can as yet be arrived at on this head. Sure it is,

nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories. But what

does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the

sea.

  Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his

spouting canal, and as that long canal- like the grand Erie Canal-

is furnished with a sort of locks (that open and shut) for the

downward retention of air or the upward exclusion of water,

therefore the whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying,

that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then

again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound

being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer

out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world

is such an excellent listener!

  Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it

is for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along,

horizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little

to one side; this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down

in a city on one side of a street. But the question returns whether

this gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words, whether the

spout of the Sperm Whale is the mere vapor of the exhaled breath, or

whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth,

and discharged through the spiracle. It is certain that the mouth

indirectly communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot be

proved that this is for the purpose of discharging water through the

spiracle. Because the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to

be, when in feeding he accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm

Whale's food is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout

even if he would. Besides, if you regard him very closely, and time

him with your watch, you will find that when unmolested, there is an

undeviating rhyme between the periods of his jets and the ordinary

periods of respiration.

  But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject? Speak

out! You have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can

you not tell water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not so

easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things

the knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost

stand in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely.

  The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist

enveloping it; and how can you certainly tell whether any water

falls from it, when, always, when you are close enough to a whale to

get a close view of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion, the

water cascading all around him. And if at such times you should

think that you really perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do

you know that they are not merely condensed from its vapor; or how

do you know that they are not those identical drops superficially

lodged in the spout-hole fissure, which is countersunk into the summit

of the whale's head? For even when tranquilly swimming through the

mid-day sea in a calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a

dromedary's in the desert; even then, the whale always carries a small

basin of water on his head, as under a blazing sun you will

sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with rain.

  Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious

touching the precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him

to be peering into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go

with your pitcher to this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For

even when coming into slight contact with the outer, vapory shreds

of the jet, which will often happen, your skin will feverishly

smart, from the acridness of the thing so touching it. And I know one,

who coming into still closer contact with the spout, whether with some

scientific object in view, or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled

off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen, the spout is

deemed poisonous; they try to evade it. Another thing; I have heard it

said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted

into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the investigator

can do then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout alone.

  Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My

hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides

other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations

touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm

Whale; I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an

undisputed fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores;

all other whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And

I am convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings,

such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there

always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of

thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity,

I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw

reflected there, a curious involved worming and undulation in the

atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while

plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled

attic, of an August noon; this seems an additional argument for the

above supposition.

  And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to

behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast,

mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his

incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor- as you will sometimes

see it- glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal

upon his thoughts. For d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear

air; they only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of

the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot,

enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for

all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with

them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of

some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor

infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.