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, umbrella-
stocks, 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.
