Moby Dick

his pestilent back.  And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan
is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds
in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells
like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer.
Thus, the fore-ground is all raging commotion; but behind,
in admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed,
the drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert
mass of a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of capture
lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his spout-hole.

Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not.  But my life
for it he was either practically conversant with his subject,
or else marvellously tutored by some experienced whaleman.
The French are the lads for painting action.  Go and gaze upon
all the paintings in Europe, and where will you find such a
gallery of living and breathing commotion on canvas, as in that
triumphal hall at Versailles; where the beholder fights his way,
pell-mell, through the consecutive great battles of France;
where every sword seems a flash of the Northern Lights,
and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a
charge of crowned centaurs?  Not wholly unworthy of a place
in that gallery, are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.

The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness
of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings
and engravings they have of their whaling scenes.
With not one tenth of England's experience in the fishery,
and not the thousandth part of that of the Americans, they have
nevertheless furnished both nations with the only finished sketches
at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the whale hunt.
For the most part, the English and American whale draughtsmen
seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical
outline of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale;
which, so far as picturesqueness of effect is concerned,
is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a pyramid.
Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman,
after giving us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale,
and three or four delicate miniatures of narwhales and porpoises,
treats us to a series of classical engravings of boat hooks,
chopping knives, and grapnels; and with the microscopic diligence
of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering world
ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals.
I mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honor him
for a veteran), but in so important a matter it was certainly
an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a sworn
affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.

In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two
other French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes
himself "H. Durand."  One of them, though not precisely adapted to our
present purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts.
It is a quiet noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French
whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on board;
the loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms
in the background, both drooping together in the breezeless air.
The effect is very fine, when considered with reference to its
presenting the hardy fishermen under one of their few aspects of
oriental repose.  The other engraving is quite a different affair:
the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart of
the Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel
(in the act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay;
and a boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity,
is about giving chase to whales in the distance.  The harpoons
and lances lie levelled for use; three oarsmen are just setting
the mast in its hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little
craft stands half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse.
From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is
going up like the smoke over a village of smithies; and to windward,
a black cloud, rising up with earnest of squalls and rains,
seems to quicken the activity of the excited seamen.



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 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