306 
MOBY DICK; OR 
sharper of hearing ? Not at all — Why then do you try to “enlarge” 
your mind ? Subtilise it. 
Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand, 
cant over the sperm whale’s head, that it may lie bottom up ; then, as- 
cending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth ; and 
were it not that the body is now completely separated from it, with a 
lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of 
his stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us 
where we are. What a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! 
from floor to ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a glistening white 
membrane, glossy as bridal satins. 
But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which 
seems like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge 
at one end instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it over- 
head, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and 
such alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom 
these spikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is it to 
behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky whale, float- 
ing there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, 
hanging straight down at right angles with his body, for all the world 
like a ship’s jibboom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; 
out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges 
of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of 
plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock- 
jaws upon him. 
In most cases this lower jaw — being easily unhinged by a practised 
artist — is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extract- 
ing the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard, white whale- 
bone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles, in- 
cluding canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to riding-whips. 
With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were 
an anchor ; and when the proper time comes — some few days after the 
other work — Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished 
dentists, are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Quee- 
queg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a 
tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan 
