309 
THE WHITE WHALE 
As every one knows, these same “hogs’ bristles,” “fins,” “whiskers,” 
“blinds,” or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and 
other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand 
has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne’s time that the 
bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And 
as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of the 
whale, as you may say ; even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtless- 
ness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the 
umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone. 
But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and, 
standing in the Bight Whale’s mouth, look around you afresh. See- 
ing all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would 
you not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing 
upon its thousands pipes ? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of 
the softest Turkey — the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor 
of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in 
hoisting it on deck. This particular tongue now before us; at a 
passing glance I should say it was a six-barreler ; that is, it will yield 
you about that amount of oil. 
Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started 
with — that the Sperm Whale and the Bight Whale have almost en- 
tirely different heads. To sum up, then: in the Bight Whale’s there 
is no great well of sperm ; no ivory teeth at all ; no long, slender man- 
dible of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale’s. Hor in the Sperm 
Whale are there any of those blinds of hone ; no huge lower lip ; and 
scarcely anything of a tongue. Again the Bight Whale has two ex- 
ternal spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one. 
Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they 
yet lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the 
other will not be very long in following. 
Can you catch the expression of Sperm Whale’s there? It is the 
same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead 
seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie- 
like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But 
mark the other head’s expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed 
by accident against the vessel’s side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. 
