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Table of Contents
Chapter 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 ..
2 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 ..
3 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 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 ..
4 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! ..
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