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 weathercocks; 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 Solomon 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!
