CHAPTER 70
The Sphynx
It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping the
body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the Sperm
Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale
surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason.
Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck;
on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that very
place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the surgeon must
operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening between him and his
subject, and that subject almost hidden in a discolored, rolling, and
oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear in mind, too, that under these
untoward circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh; and in
that subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single peep into
the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully steer clear of all
adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide the spine at a critical point
hard by its insertion into the skull. Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb’s
boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale?
When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a cable
till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale it is hoisted
on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full grown leviathan this
is impossible; for the sperm whale’s head embraces nearly one third of his
entire bulk, and completely to suspend such a burden as that, even by the
immense tackles of a whaler, this were as vain a thing as to attempt
weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers’ scales.
The Pequod’s whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head
was hoisted against the ship’s side—about half way out of the sea, so that it
might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element. And there with
the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the enormous
downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm on that side
projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that blood-dripping head hung
to the Pequod’s waist like the giant Holofernes’s from the girdle of Judith.
When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went
below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but now
deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was
more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.
A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone
from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to gaze
over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took Stubb’s long
spade still remaining there after the whale’s decapitation and striking it into
the lower part of the half-suspended mass, placed its other end crutchwise
under one arm, and so stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this
head.
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so
intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and
venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard,
yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell
us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest.
That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this
world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold
hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is
ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-
land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver
never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers
would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers
when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the
exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou
saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck;
for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his
murderers still sailed on unharmed— while swift lightnings shivered the
neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to
outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the
planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”
“Sail ho!” cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.
“Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly erecting himself,
while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. “That lively cry
upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better man.—Where away?”
“Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze to
us!
“Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way,
and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man!
how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest
atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.”
