CHAPTER 88

  Schools and Schoolmasters

  The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of

Sperm Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause

inducing those vast aggregations.

  Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as must

have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are

occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals

each. Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two

sorts; those composed almost entirely of females, and those

mustering none but young vigorous males, or bulls as they are

familiarly designated.

  In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably

see a male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any

alarm, evinces his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the

flight of his ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman,

swimming about over the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by all

the solaces and endearments of the harem. The contrast between this

Ottoman and his concubines is striking; because, while he is always of

the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full

growth, are not more than one-third of the bulk of an average-sized

male. They are comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to

exceed half a dozen yards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot

be denied, that upon the whole they are hereditarily entitled to

embonpoint.

  It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their

indolent ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move

in leisurely search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time

for the full flower of the Equatorial feeding season, having just

returned, perhaps, from spending the summer in the Northern seas,

and so cheating summer of all unpleasant weariness and warmth. By

the time they have lounged up and down the promenade of the Equator

awhile, they start for the Oriental waters in anticipation of the cool

season there, and so evade the other excessive temperature of the

year.

  When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange

suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his

interesting family. Should any unwarranted pert young Leviathan coming

that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies,

with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away!

High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be

permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though do what the

Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his

bed; for alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often

cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with

the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love.

They fence with their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them

together, and so striving for the supremacy like elks that warringly

interweave their antlers. Not a few are captured having the deep scars

of these encounters,- furrowed heads, broken teeth, scolloped fins;

and in some instances, wrenched and dislocated mouths.

  But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away

at the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it very diverting to

watch that lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again

and revels there awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young

Lothario, like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand

concubines. Granting other whales to be in sight, the fisherman will

seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks

are too lavish of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is

small. As for the sons and daughters they beget, why, those sons and

daughters must take care of themselves; at least, with only the

maternal help. For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that

might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however

much for the bower; and so, being a great traveller, he leaves his

anonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic. In good

time, nevertheless, as the ardor of youth declines; as years and dumps

increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a

general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and

virtue supplants the love for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the

impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life, forswears, disbands the

harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all alone

among the meridians and parallels saying his prayers, and warning each

young Leviathan from his amorous errors.

  Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school,

so is the lord and master of that school technically known as the

schoolmaster. It is therefore not in strict character, however

admirably satirical, that after going to school himself, he should

then go abroad inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly of

it. His title, schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived from

the name bestowed upon the harem itself, but some have surmised that

the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, must

have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a

country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days,

and what was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into

some of his pupils.

  The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster

whale betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged

Sperm Whales. Almost universally, a lone whale- as a solitary

Leviathan is called- proves an ancient one. Like venerable

moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one near him but Nature

herself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters, and the

best of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets.

  The schools composing none but young and vigorous males,

previously mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools.

For while those females are characteristically timid, the young males,

or forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most

pugnacious of all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to

encounter; excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales,

sometimes met, and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated

by a penal gout.

  The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools.

Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and

wickedness, tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking

rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he

would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this

turbulence though, and when about three-fourths grown, break up, and

separately go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems.

  Another point of difference between the male and female schools is

still more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a

Forty-barrel-bull- poor devil! all his comrades quit him. But strike a

member of the harem school, and her companions swim around her with

every token of concern, sometimes lingering so near her and so long,

as themselves to fall a prey.