Kabanata Kabanata 88 · Schools and Schoolmasters.

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.