Moby Dick

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 fisherman 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 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.



CHAPTER 89

Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish


The allusion to the waifs and waif-poles in the last chapter
but one, necessitates some account of the laws and regulations
of the whale fishery, of which the waif may be deemed the grand
symbol and badge.

It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in company,
a whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be finally killed
and captured by another vessel; and herein are indirectly comprised
many minor contingencies, all partaking of this one grand feature.
For example,--after a weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale,
the body may get loose from the ship by reason of a violent storm;
and drifting far away to leeward, be retaken by a second whaler, who,
in a calm, snugly tows it alongside, without risk of life or line.
Thus the most vexatious and violent disputes would often arise between