.. < chapter lxxxviii 28  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,

.. <p 390 >

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

.. <p 391 >

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

ardor 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

.. <p 392 >

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.

.. <p 393 >