Chapter 90.00: CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters.

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CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters.
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The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm
Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause inducing those
vast aggregations.

Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as must have
been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are occasionally
observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each. Such bands are
known as schools. They generally are of two sorts; those composed almost
entirely of females, and those mustering none but young vigorous males, or
bulls, as they are familiarly designated.

In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see a
male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm, evinces
his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flight of his
ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about
over the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by all the solaces and
endearments of the harem. The contrast between this Ottoman and his
concubines is striking; because, while he is always of the largest
leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth, are not more
than one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male. They are
comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen
yards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the
whole they are hereditarily entitled to _en bon point_.

It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent
ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move in leisurely
search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time for the full flower
of the Equatorial feeding season, having just returned, perhaps, from
spending the summer in the Northern seas, and so cheating summer of all
unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time they have lounged up and down
the promenade of the Equator awhile, they start for the Oriental waters in
anticipation of the cool season there, and so evade the other excessive
temperature of the year.

When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange
suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his
interesting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming
that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies, with
what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away! High
times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be permitted to
invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though do what the Bashaw will, he
cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his bed; for, alas! All
fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible
duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes
come to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence with their long lower
jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving for the supremacy
like elks that warringly interweave their antlers. Not a few are captured
having the deep scars of these encounters,—furrowed heads, broken
teeth, scolloped fins; and in some instances, wrenched and dislocated
mouths.

But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at the
first rush of the harem’s lord, then is it very diverting to watch that
lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and revels there
awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario, like pious
Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines. Granting other
whales to be in sight, the fishermen will seldom give chase to one of
these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength,
and hence their unctuousness is small. As for the sons and the daughters
they beget, why, those sons and daughters must take care of themselves; at
least, with only the maternal help. For like certain other omnivorous
roving lovers that might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the
nursery, however much for the bower; and so, being a great traveller, he
leaves his anonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic. In
good time, nevertheless, as the ardour of youth declines; as years and
dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a
general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and virtue
supplants the love for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the impotent,
repentant, admonitory stage of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and
grown to an exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the
meridians and parallels saying his prayers, and warning each young
Leviathan from his amorous errors.

Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so is the
lord and master of that school technically known as the schoolmaster. It
is therefore not in strict character, however admirably satirical, that
after going to school himself, he should then go abroad inculcating not
what he learned there, but the folly of it. His title, schoolmaster, would
very naturally seem derived from the name bestowed upon the harem itself,
but some have surmised that the man who first thus entitled this sort of
Ottoman whale, must have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself
what sort of a country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his
younger days, and what was the nature of those occult lessons he
inculcated into some of his pupils.

The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale
betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm Whales.
Almost universally, a lone whale—as a solitary Leviathan is called—proves
an ancient one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no
one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to wife in the
wilderness of waters, and the best of wives she is, though she keeps so
many moody secrets.

The schools composing none but young and vigorous males, previously
mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For while those
female whales are characteristically timid, the young males, or
forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious of
all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter;
excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met, and
these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.

The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools. Like a
mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness,
tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no
prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he would a riotous lad
at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this turbulence though, and when
about three-fourths grown, break up, and separately go about in quest of
settlements, that is, harems.

Another point of difference between the male and female schools is still
more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a Forty-barrel-bull—poor
devil! All his comrades quit him. But strike a member of the harem school,
and her companions swim around her with every token of concern, sometimes
lingering so near her and so long, as themselves to fall a prey.