.. < chapter lxxxv 11  THE FOUNTAIN >


     That for six thousand years --and no one

knows how many millions of ages before --the great whales should have been

spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the

deep, as with so many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some

centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain

of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings --that all this should

be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter

minutes past one o'clock P. M.  of this sixteenth day of December, A. D.

),

it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all,

really water, or nothing but vapor --this is surely a noteworthy thing.  Let

us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items contingent.

Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their gills, the finny tribes

in general breathe the air which at all times is combined with the element in

which they swim, hence, a herring or a cod might live a century, and never

once raise its head above the surface.  But owing to his marked internal

structure which gives him regular lungs, like a human being's, the whale can

only live by inhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere.  Wherefore

the necessity

.. <p 368 >

for his periodical visits to the upper world.  But he cannot in any degree

breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary attitude, the Sperm Whale's

mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath the surface; and what is still

more, his windpipe has no connexion with his mouth.  No, he breathes through

his spiracle alone; and this is on the top of his head.  If I say, that in

any creature breathing is only a function indispensable to vitality, inasmuch

as it withdraws from the air a certain element, which being subsequently

brought into contact with the blood imparts to the blood its vivifying

principle, I do not think I shall err; though I may possibly use some

superfluous scientific words.  Assume it, and it follows that if all the

blood in a man could be aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his

nostrils and not fetch another for a considerable time.  That is to say, he

would then live without breathing.  Anomalous as it may seem, this is

precisely the case with the whale, who systematically lives, by intervals,

his full hour and more (when at the bottom) without drawing a single

breath, or so much as in any way inhaling a particle of air; for, remember,

he has no gills.  How is this?  Between his ribs and on each side of his spine

he is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like

vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface, are completely distended

with oxygenated blood.  So that for an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the

sea, he carries a surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camel

crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus supply of drink for future use

in its four supplementary stomachs.  The anatomical fact of this labyrinth

is indisputable; and that the supposition founded upon it is reasonable and

true, seems the more cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise inexplicable

obstinacy of that leviathan in having his spoutings out, as the fishermen

phrase it.  This is what I mean.  If unmolested, upon rising to the surface,

the Sperm Whale will continue there for a period of time exactly uniform with

all his other unmolested risings.  Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets

seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he rises

again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to a minute.

Now, if after he fetches a few


.. <p 369 >

breaths you alarm him, so that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again

to make good his regular allowance of air.  And not till those seventy breaths

are told, will he finally go down to stay out his full term below.  Remark,

however, that in different individuals these rates are different; but in any

one they are alike.  Now, why should the whale thus insist upon having his

spoutings out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air, ere

descending for good?  How obvious is it, too, that this necessity for the

whale's rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase.  For not by

hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught, when sailing a thousand

fathoms beneath the sunlight.  Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the

great necessities that strike the victory to thee!  In man, breathing is

incessantly going on --one breath only serving for two or three pulsations; so

that whatever other business he has to attend to, waking or sleeping,

breathe he must, or die he will.  But the Sperm Whale only breathes about one

seventh or Sunday of his time.  It has been said that the whale only breathes

through his spout-hole; if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are

mixed with water, then I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his

sense of smell seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that at

all answers to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so clogged

with two elements, it could not be expected to have the power of smelling.

But owing to the mystery of the spout --whether it be water or whether it be

vapor --no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at on this head.  Sure it

is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories.  But what

does he want of them?  No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the sea.

Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting canal,


     and as that long canal --like the grand Erie Canal --is furnished with a sort

of locks (that open and shut) for the downward retention of air or the

upward exclusion of water, therefore the whale has no voice; unless you

insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through

his nose.  But then again, what has the whale to say?  Seldom have I known

any profound being that had anything to say to this

.. <p 370 >

world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living.

Oh!  happy that the world is such an excellent listener!  Now, the spouting

canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is for the conveyance of air,


     and for several feet laid along, horizontally, just beneath the upper

surface of his head, and a little to one side; this curious canal is very

much like a gas-pipe laid down in a city on one side of a street.  But the

question returns whether this gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words,


     whether the spout of the Sperm Whale is the mere vapor of the exhaled breath,


     or whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth,

and discharged through the spiracle.  It is certain that the mouth indirectly

communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot be proved that this is

for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle.  Because the

greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be, when in feeding he

accidentally takes in water.  But the Sperm Whale's food is far beneath the

surface, and there he cannot spout even if he would.  Besides, if you regard

him very closely, and time him with your watch, you will find that when

unmolested, there is an undeviating rhyme between the periods of his jets and

the ordinary periods of respiration.  But why pester one with all this

reasoning on the subject?  Speak out!  You have seen him spout; then declare

what the spout is; can you not tell water from air?  My dear sir, in this

world it is not so easy to settle these plain things.  I have ever found your

plain things the knottiest of all.  And as for this whale spout, you might

almost stand in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely.  The

central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist enveloping it; and

how can you certainly tell whether any water falls from it, when, always,

when you are close enough to a whale to get a close view of his spout, he is

in a prodigious commotion, the water cascading all around him.  And if at

such times you should think that you really perceived drops of moisture in

the spout, how do you know that they are not merely condensed from its vapor;


     or how do you know that they are not those identical drops superficially

lodged in the spout-hole fissure, which is countersunk into the summit of the

whale's head?  For even when tranquilly swimming through the mid-day

.. <p 371 >

sea in a calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary's in the

desert; even then, the whale always carries a small basin of water on his

head, as under a blazing sun you will sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled

up with rain.  Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious

touching the precise nature of the whale spout.  It will not do for him to be

peering into it, and putting his face in it.  You cannot go with your pitcher

to this fountain and fill it, and bring it away.  For even when coming into

slight contact with the outer, vapory shreds of the jet, which will often

happen, your skin will feverishly smart, from the acridness of the thing so

touching it.  And I know one, who coming into still closer contact with the

spout, whether with some scientific object in view, or otherwise, I cannot

say, the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm.  Wherefore, among whalemen,

the spout is deemed poisonous; they try to evade it.  Another thing; I have

heard it said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted

into your eyes, it will blind you.  The wisest thing the investigator can do

then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout alone.  Still, we can

hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish.  My hypothesis is this:

that the spout is nothing but mist.  And besides other reasons, to this

conclusion I am impelled, by considerations touching the great inherent

dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I account him no common, shallow

being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed fact that he is never found on

soundings, or near shores; all other whales sometimes are.  He is both

ponderous and profound.  And I am convinced that from the heads of all

ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante,

and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the

act of thinking deep thoughts.  While composing a little treatise on Eternity,


     I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw reflected

there, a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my

head.  The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought,

after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon; this

seems an additional argument for the above supposition.  And how nobly it

raises our conceit of the mighty, misty

.. <p 372 >

monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his

vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his

incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor --as you will sometimes see it

--glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his

thoughts.  For, d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only

irradiate vapor.  And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my

mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a

heavenly ray.  And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny;

but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions.  Doubts of all

things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination

makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both

with equal eye.

.. <p 372 >