285 
THE WHITE WHALE 
Thus, while in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror 
to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerful panic to the 
world. 
Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts 
than the Cock Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who 
believe in them. 
CHAPTER LXIX 
THE SPHINX 
It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping 
the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the 
Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced 
whale surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason. 
Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a 
neck ; on the contrary, where his head ‘and body seem to join, there, in 
that very place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the 
surgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening be- 
tween him and his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a dis- 
coloured, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear in 
mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut many 
feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneaneous manner, without 
so much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus 
made, he must skillfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts, 
and exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion into 
the skull. Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb’s boast, that he demanded 
but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale ? 
When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a 
cable till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale 
it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full- 
grown leviathan this is impossible; for the Sperm Whale’s head em- 
braces nearly one-third of his entire bulk, and completely to suspend 
such a burden as that, even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this 
were as vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers’ 
scales. 
The Pequod’s whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the 
