THE WHITE WHALE 245 
is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that 
his precise expression the devil himself could not catch. 
But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded 
whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at 
all. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that 
his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy 
Bentham’s skeleton, which is preserved in the library of one of his 
executor’s, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian 
old gentleman, with all Jeremy’s other leading personal characteristics; 
yet nothing of this kind could he inferred from any leviathan’s artic- 
ulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton 
of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and padded 
animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelops 
it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part 
of this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously dis- 
played in the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the 
bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four 
regular hone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But 
all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human 
fingers in an artificial covering. “However recklessly the whale may 
sometimes serve us,” said humorous Stubb one day, “he can never be 
truly said to handle us without mittens.” 
For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must 
needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the 
world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait 
may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with 
any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way 
of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like ; and the only 
mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living con' 
tour, is by going a-whaling yourself ; but by so doing, you run no small 
risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to 
me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this 
Leviathan. 
