Chapter 72.00: CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.

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CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.
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It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping the
body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the Sperm
Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale
surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason.

Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck; on
the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that very
place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the surgeon must
operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening between him and his
subject, and that subject almost hidden in a discoloured, rolling, and
oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear in mind, too, that under
these untoward circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh;
and in that subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single
peep into the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully steer
clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide the spine at
a critical point hard by its insertion into the skull. Do you not marvel,
then, at Stubb’s boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm
whale?

When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a cable
till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale it is
hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full grown
leviathan this is impossible; for the sperm whale’s head embraces nearly
one third of his entire bulk, and completely to suspend such a burden as
that, even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this were as vain a thing
as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers’ scales.

The Pequod’s whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head was
hoisted against the ship’s side—about half way out of the sea, so
that it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element. And
there with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the
enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm on
that side projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that
blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod’s waist like the giant Holofernes’s
from the girdle of Judith.

When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went
below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but now
deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was
more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.

A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone from
his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to gaze over
the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took Stubb’s long
spade—still remaining there after the whale’s decapitation—and
striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended mass, placed its
other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood leaning over with eyes
attentively fixed on this head.

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so
intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast
and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a
beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head,
and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast
dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has
moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies
rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this
frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there,
in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been
where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where
sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the
locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they
sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed
false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from
the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the
insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while
swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a
righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! Thou hast seen
enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one
syllable is thine!”

“Sail ho!” cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.

“Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly erecting himself,
while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. “That lively cry
upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better man. —Where
away?”

“Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze to
us!

“Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way, and
to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man! How
far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! Not the smallest atom
stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.”