Moby Dick

whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings),
they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess,
in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is quite a dish
among some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among
the epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to
have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf's head
from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination.
And that is the reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf's
head before him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see.
The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him, with an "Et
tu Brute!" expression.

It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively
unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him
with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way,
from the consideration before mentioned:  i.e. that a man
should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it
too by its own light.  But no doubt the first man that ever
murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung;
and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would
have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does.
Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds
of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds.
Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw?
Cannibals? who is not a cannibal?  I tell you it will be more
tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary
in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable
for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment,
than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest
geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers
in thy pate-de-foie-gras.

But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is
adding insult to injury, is it?  Look at your knife-handle, there,
my civilized and enlightened gourmand, dining off that roast beef,
what is that handle made of?--what but the bones of the brother
of the very ox you are eating?  And what do you pick your teeth with,
after devouring that fat goose?  With a feather of the same fowl.
And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the
Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars?
It is only within the last month or two that that society passed
a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.



CHAPTER 66

The Shark Massacre


When in the Southern Fishery a captured Sperm Whale, after long
and weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not,
as a general thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business
of cutting him in.  For that business is an exceedingly laborious one;
is not very soon completed; and requires all hands to set about it.
Therefore, the common usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm a'lee;
and then send every one below to his hammock till daylight,
with the reservation that, until that time, anchor-watches shall be kept;
that is, two and two for an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation
shall mount the deck to see that all goes well.

But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific,
this plan will not answer at all; because such incalculable
hosts of sharks gather round the moored carcase, that were
he left so for six hours, say, on a stretch, little more than
the skeleton would be visible by morning.  In most other parts
of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so largely abound,
their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably diminished,
by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades,
a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances,
only seems to tickle them into still greater activity.
But it was not thus in the present case with the Pequod's sharks;
though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such sights,
to have looked over her side that night, would have almost
thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks
the maggots in it.

Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after
his supper was concluded; and when, accordingly Queequeg
and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement
was created among the sharks; for immediately suspending
the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns,
so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea,
these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades,* kept
up an incessant murdering of the sharks, by striking the keen
steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part.
But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts,
the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought
about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe.
They viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments,
but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own;
till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by
the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound.
Nor was this all.  It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses
and ghosts of these creatures.  A sort of generic or Pantheistic
vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones,
after what might be called the individual life had departed.
Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin,
one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off,
when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.