Kabanata Kabanata 57 · Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in

Stone; in Mountains; in Stars.

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!