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 en
bon point.
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 unwarrantably 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 the 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
female whales 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.
