Chapter 76.00: CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.

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CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.
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Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us join
them, and lay together our own.

Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right
Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly
hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all
the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between them
is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this moment
hanging from the Pequod’s side; and as we may freely go from one to the
other, by merely stepping across the deck:—where, I should like to
know, will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology than
here?

In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these
heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a certain
mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale’s which the Right Whale’s sadly
lacks. There is more character in the Sperm Whale’s head. As you behold
it, you involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him, in point of
pervading dignity. In the present instance, too, this dignity is
heightened by the pepper and salt colour of his head at the summit, giving
token of advanced age and large experience. In short, he is what the
fishermen technically call a “grey-headed whale.”

Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads—namely, the
two most important organs, the eye and the ear. Far back on the side of
the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale’s jaw, if you
narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you would
fancy to be a young colt’s eye; so out of all proportion is it to the
magnitude of the head.

Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale’s eyes, it is plain
that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more than he
can one exactly astern. In a word, the position of the whale’s eyes
corresponds to that of a man’s ears; and you may fancy, for yourself, how
it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects through your ears.
You would find that you could only command some thirty degrees of vision
in advance of the straight side-line of sight; and about thirty more
behind it. If your bitterest foe were walking straight towards you, with
dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not be able to see him, any more
than if he were stealing upon you from behind. In a word, you would have
two backs, so to speak; but, at the same time, also, two fronts (side
fronts): for what is it that makes the front of a man—what, indeed,
but his eyes?

Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes
are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to
produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of the
whale’s eyes, effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid
head, which towers between them like a great mountain separating two lakes
in valleys; this, of course, must wholly separate the impressions which
each independent organ imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one
distinct picture on this side, and another distinct picture on that side;
while all between must be profound darkness and nothingness to him. Man
may, in effect, be said to look out on the world from a sentry-box with
two joined sashes for his window. But with the whale, these two sashes are
separately inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly impairing the
view. This peculiarity of the whale’s eyes is a thing always to be borne
in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader in some
subsequent scenes.

A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this
visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content with a
hint. So long as a man’s eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing is
involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing whatever
objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one’s experience will teach him,
that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of things at one
glance, it is quite impossible for him, attentively, and completely, to
examine any two things—however large or however small—at one
and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side by side and
touch each other. But if you now come to separate these two objects, and
surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in order to see one
of them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other
will be utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness. How is it,
then, with the whale? True, both his eyes, in themselves, must
simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more comprehensive,
combining, and subtle than man’s, that he can at the same moment of time
attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one side of him, and
the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he can, then is it as
marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able simultaneously to go
through the demonstrations of two distinct problems in Euclid. Nor,
strictly investigated, is there any incongruity in this comparison.

It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when beset
by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer frights, so
common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly proceeds from the
helpless perplexity of volition, in which their divided and diametrically
opposite powers of vision must involve them.

But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are an
entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads for
hours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no external leaf
whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so
wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the eye. With
respect to their ears, this important difference is to be observed between
the sperm whale and the right. While the ear of the former has an external
opening, that of the latter is entirely and evenly covered over with a
membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible from without.

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world
through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is
smaller than a hare’s? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of
Herschel’s great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of
cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of
hearing? Not at all. —Why then do you try to “enlarge” your mind?
Subtilize it.

Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand, cant
over the sperm whale’s head, that it may lie bottom up; then, ascending by
a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and were it not that
the body is now completely separated from it, with a lantern we might
descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his stomach. But let us
hold on here by this tooth, and look about us where we are. What a really
beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! From floor to ceiling, lined, or
rather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal satins.

But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems like
the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at one end,
instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead, and
expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such, alas!
It proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom these spikes fall
with impaling force. But far more terrible is it to behold, when fathoms
down in the sea, you see some sulky whale, floating there suspended, with
his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at
right-angles with his body, for all the world like a ship’s jib-boom. This
whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps;
hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed,
leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his
tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon him.

In most cases this lower jaw—being easily unhinged by a practised
artist—is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of
extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white
whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles,
including canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to riding-whips.

With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were an
anchor; and when the proper time comes—some few days after the other
work—Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished
dentists, are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg
lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle
being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag
stumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands. There are generally forty-two
teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed; nor filled
after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and
piled away like joists for building houses.