CHAPTER 76
The Battering-Ram
Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale’s head, I would have you, as
a sensible physiologist, simply—particularly remark its front aspect, in all
its compacted collectedness. I would have you investigate it now with the
sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated, intelligent estimate
of whatever battering-ram power may be lodged there. Here is a vital point;
for you must either satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever
remain an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true
events, perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history.
You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm Whale,
the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to the water;
you observe that the lower part of that front slopes considerably backwards,
so as to furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which receives the
boom-like lower jaw; you observe that the mouth is entirely under the head,
much in the same way, indeed, as though your own mouth were entirely
under your chin.
Moreover you observe that the whale has no external nose; and that what
nose he has—his spout hole— is on the top of his head; you observe that his
eyes and ears are at the sides of his head; nearly one third of his entire
length from the front. Wherefore, you must now have perceived that the
front of the Sperm Whale’s head is a dead, blind wall, without a single
organ or tender prominence of any sort whatsoever. Furthermore, you are
now to consider that only in the extreme, lower, backward sloping part of
the front of the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone; and not till you
get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the full cranial
development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad.
Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise the
most delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of the
substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy. In
some previous place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the
body of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so with the head; but
with this difference: about the head this envelope, though not so thick is of
a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not handled it. The
severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strongest human
arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm
Whale were paved with horses’ hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks
in it.
Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded Indian-
men chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks, what do
the sailors do? They do not suspend between them, at the point of coming
contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or wood. No, they hold there a
large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped in the thickest and toughest of
ox-hide. That bravely and uninjured takes the jam which would have
snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars. By itself this
sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at. But supplementary to this,
it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as ordinary fish possess what is
called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at will, of distension or
contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no such
provision in him; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable manner in
which he now depresses his head altogether beneath the surface, and anon
swims with it high elevated out of the water; considering the unobstructed
elasticity of its envelope; considering the unique interior of his head; it has
hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled
honeycombs there may possibly have some hitherto unknown and
unsuspected connexion with the outer air, so as to be susceptible to
atmospheric distension and contraction. If this be so, fancy the
irresistibleness of that might, to which the most impalpable and
destructive of all elements contributes.
Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable
wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass of
tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is— by the
cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect. So that when I
shall hereafter detail to you all the specialities and concentrations of
potency everywhere lurking in this expansive monster; when I shall show
you some of his more inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will have
renounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that
though the Sperm Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien,
and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of
your eye-brow. For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and
sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only
to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then? What befell
the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess’s veil at Lais?
