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1Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or
2separately and in detail upon some few interior structural features. But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension
3of him, it behooves me now to unbutton him still further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters,
4and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that
5is to say, in his unconditional skeleton. But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the fishery,
6pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver
7lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass, hold up a specimen rib for exhibition? Explain
8thyself, Ishmael. Can you land a full-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook dishes a roast-pig? Surely
9not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been, Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone;
10the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up
11the frame-work of leviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and cheeseries in his bowels. I
12confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I
13have been blessed with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged to, a small cub Sperm Whale was
14once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the heads of
15the lances. Think you I let that chance go, without using my boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and breaking the seal and
16reading all the contents of that young cub? And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their
17gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted to my late royal friend Tranquo, king of
18Tranque, one of the Arsacides. For being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey of Algiers, I was
19invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque, at his retired palm villa at Pupella; a
20sea-side glen not very far distant from what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital. Among many other fine
21qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had brought
22together in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of his people could invent; chiefly carved woods of
23wonderful devices, chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes; and all these distributed among
24whatever natural wonders, the wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores. Chief among these
25latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his
26head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at
27last been stripped of its fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun, then the skeleton was
28carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it. The ribs were hung
29with trophies; the vertebræ were carved with Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests kept
30up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again sent forth its vapory spout; while, suspended from a
31bough, the terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword that so affrighted Damocles. It
32was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their
33living sap; the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine
34tendrils formed the warp and woof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden branches; all
35the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. Through the lacings of
36the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen
37weaver!--pause!--one word!--whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings?
38Speak, weaver!--stay thy hand!--but one single word with thee! Nay--the shuttle flies--the figures float from forth the
39loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened,
40that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape
41it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken
42words that are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the walls, bursting from
43the opened casements. Thereby have villainies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of
44the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar. Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that
45Arsacidean wood, the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging--a gigantic idler! Yet, as the ever-woven verdant
46warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over with
47the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised
48Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories. Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited
49this wondrous whale, and saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real jet had issued,
50I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the
51priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced before this skeleton--brushed the vines
52aside--broke through the ribs--and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid its many winding, shaded
53colonnades and arbours. But soon my line was out; and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered. I
54saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones. Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the
55skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me taking the altitude of the final rib, "How now!"
56they shouted; "Dar'st thou measure this our god! That's for us." "Aye, priests--well, how long do ye make him, then?"
57But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them, concerning feet and inches; they cracked each other's sconces with their
58yard-sticks--the great skull echoed--and seizing that lucky chance, I quickly concluded my own admeasurements. These
59admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first, be it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter
60any fancied measurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can refer to, to test my accuracy. There is
61a Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where they have some
62fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise, I have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire,
63they have what the proprietors call "the only perfect specimen of a Greenland or River Whale in the United States."
64Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford Constable has in his
65possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend
66King Tranquo's. In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons belonged, were originally claimed by
67their proprietors upon similar grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir Clifford, because he was
68lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a great chest
69of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony cavities--spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan--and swing all
70day upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will show round
71future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering
72gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the
73unrivalled view from his forehead. The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my
74right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of
75preserving such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other parts of my body to remain a
76blank page for a poem I was then composing--at least, what untattooed parts might remain--I did not trouble myself with
77the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.
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