Chapter 59.00: CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars.

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CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars.
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On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen a
crippled beggar (or _kedger_, as the sailors say) holding a painted board
before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg. There
are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats (presumed to
contain the missing leg in all its original integrity) is being crunched
by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten years, they tell me,
has that man held up that picture, and exhibited that stump to an
incredulous world. But the time of his justification has now come. His
three whales are as good whales as were ever published in Wapping, at any
rate; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you will find in the
western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a
stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands
ruefully contemplating his own amputation.

Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag
Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes,
graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies’ busks
wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other like skrimshander articles,
as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances they
elaborately carve out of the rough material, in their hours of ocean
leisure. Some of them have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements,
specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But, in general, they
toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool
of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a
mariner’s fancy.

Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to
that condition in which God placed him, i. E. what is called savagery. Your
true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a
savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready
at any moment to rebel against him.

Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic
hours, is his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian war-club
or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is
as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but
a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark’s tooth, that miraculous intricacy of
wooden net-work has been achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady
application.

As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the
same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark’s tooth, of his
one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not quite
as workmanlike, but as close packed in its maziness of design, as the
Greek savage, Achilles’s shield; and full of barbaric spirit and
suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert Durer.

Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of the
noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles of
American whalers. Some of them are done with much accuracy.

At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung by
the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is sleepy,
the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking whales are seldom
remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some old-fashioned
churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for weather-cocks;
but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all intents and purposes
so labelled with “_Hands off! _” you cannot examine them closely enough to
decide upon their merit.

In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken
cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain,
you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan
partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf
of green surges.

Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually
girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky point
of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined
along the undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough whaleman, to see
these sights; and not only that, but if you wish to return to such a sight
again, you must be sure and take the exact intersecting latitude and
longitude of your first stand-point, else so chance-like are such
observations of the hills, that your precise, previous stand-point would
require a laborious re-discovery; like the Soloma Islands, which still
remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Mendanna trod them and old
Figuera chronicled them.

Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace out
great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them; as when
long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked in
battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan round
and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first
defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have
boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far
beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish.

With a frigate’s anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for
spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see
whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie
encamped beyond my mortal sight!