Chapter 87.00: CHAPTER 85. The Fountain.

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CHAPTER 85. The Fountain.
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That for six thousand years—and no one knows how many millions of
ages before—the great whales should have been spouting all over the
sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so
many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back,
thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale,
watching these sprinklings and spoutings—that all this should be,
and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes
past one o’clock P. M. Of this sixteenth day of December, A. D. 1851), it
should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all,
really water, or nothing but vapor—this is surely a noteworthy
thing.

Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items
contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their gills,
the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times is combined
with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or a cod might live
a century, and never once raise its head above the surface. But owing to
his marked internal structure which gives him regular lungs, like a human
being’s, the whale can only live by inhaling the disengaged air in the
open atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity for his periodical visits to the
upper world. But he cannot in any degree breathe through his mouth, for,
in his ordinary attitude, the Sperm Whale’s mouth is buried at least eight
feet beneath the surface; and what is still more, his windpipe has no
connexion with his mouth. No, he breathes through his spiracle alone; and
this is on the top of his head.

If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function indispensable
to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a certain element,
which being subsequently brought into contact with the blood imparts to
the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think I shall err; though I
may possibly use some superfluous scientific words. Assume it, and it
follows that if all the blood in a man could be aerated with one breath,
he might then seal up his nostrils and not fetch another for a
considerable time. That is to say, he would then live without breathing.
Anomalous as it may seem, this is precisely the case with the whale, who
systematically lives, by intervals, his full hour and more (when at the
bottom) without drawing a single breath, or so much as in any way inhaling
a particle of air; for, remember, he has no gills. How is this? Between
his ribs and on each side of his spine he is supplied with a remarkable
involved Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when
he quits the surface, are completely distended with oxygenated blood. So
that for an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a
surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camel crossing the waterless
desert carries a surplus supply of drink for future use in its four
supplementary stomachs. The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is
indisputable; and that the supposition founded upon it is reasonable and
true, seems the more cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise
inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in _having his spoutings out_, as
the fishermen phrase it. This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon rising
to the surface, the Sperm Whale will continue there for a period of time
exactly uniform with all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven
minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then
whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over
again, to a minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him,
so that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good his
regular allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are told,
will he finally go down to stay out his full term below. Remark, however,
that in different individuals these rates are different; but in any one
they are alike. Now, why should the whale thus insist upon having his
spoutings out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air, ere
descending for good? How obvious is it, too, that this necessity for the
whale’s rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase. For not
by hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught, when sailing a
thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight. Not so much thy skill, then, O
hunter, as the great necessities that strike the victory to thee!

In man, breathing is incessantly going on—one breath only serving
for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to
attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will. But the
Sperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday of his time.

It has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-hole; if
it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water, then I
opine we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of smell seems
obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that at all answers to
his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so clogged with two
elements, it could not be expected to have the power of smelling. But
owing to the mystery of the spout—whether it be water or whether it
be vapor—no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at on this
head. Sure it is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper
olfactories. But what does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no
Cologne-water in the sea.

Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting
canal, and as that long canal—like the grand Erie Canal—is
furnished with a sort of locks (that open and shut) for the downward
retention of air or the upward exclusion of water, therefore the whale has
no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely
rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to
say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to
this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a
living. Oh! Happy that the world is such an excellent listener!

Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is for
the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along, horizontally, just
beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little to one side; this
curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down in a city on one side
of a street. But the question returns whether this gas-pipe is also a
water-pipe; in other words, whether the spout of the Sperm Whale is the
mere vapor of the exhaled breath, or whether that exhaled breath is mixed
with water taken in at the mouth, and discharged through the spiracle. It
is certain that the mouth indirectly communicates with the spouting canal;
but it cannot be proved that this is for the purpose of discharging water
through the spiracle. Because the greatest necessity for so doing would
seem to be, when in feeding he accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm
Whale’s food is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout even if
he would. Besides, if you regard him very closely, and time him with your
watch, you will find that when unmolested, there is an undeviating rhyme
between the periods of his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration.

But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject? Speak out! You
have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can you not tell
water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to settle
these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of
all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand in it, and yet be
undecided as to what it is precisely.

The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist enveloping
it; and how can you certainly tell whether any water falls from it, when,
always, when you are close enough to a whale to get a close view of his
spout, he is in a prodigious commotion, the water cascading all around
him. And if at such times you should think that you really perceived drops
of moisture in the spout, how do you know that they are not merely
condensed from its vapor; or how do you know that they are not those
identical drops superficially lodged in the spout-hole fissure, which is
countersunk into the summit of the whale’s head? For even when tranquilly
swimming through the mid-day sea in a calm, with his elevated hump
sun-dried as a dromedary’s in the desert; even then, the whale always
carries a small basin of water on his head, as under a blazing sun you
will sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with rain.

Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching the
precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him to be peering
into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go with your pitcher to
this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even when coming into
slight contact with the outer, vapory shreds of the jet, which will often
happen, your skin will feverishly smart, from the acridness of the thing
so touching it. And I know one, who coming into still closer contact with
the spout, whether with some scientific object in view, or otherwise, I
cannot say, the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among
whalemen, the spout is deemed poisonous; they try to evade it. Another
thing; I have heard it said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet
is fairly spouted into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the
investigator can do then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout
alone.

Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My
hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides other
reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations touching the
great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I account him no
common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed fact that he is
never found on soundings, or near shores; all other whales sometimes are.
He is both ponderous and profound. And I am convinced that from the heads
of all ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil,
Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible
steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a
little treatise on Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror before
me; and ere long saw reflected there, a curious involved worming and
undulation in the atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of my
hair, while plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin
shingled attic, of an August noon; this seems an additional argument for
the above supposition.

And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to
behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild
head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicable
contemplations, and that vapor—as you will sometimes see it—glorified
by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts. For,
d’ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapor.
And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine
intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And
for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or
denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things
earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes
neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with
equal eye.