311 
THE WHITE WHALE 
though, as will soon he revealed, its contents partly comprise the most 
delicate oil; yet, you are now to be appraised of the nature of the 
substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy. 
In some previous place I have described to you how the blubber 
wraps the body of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so 
with the head ; but with this difference : about the head this envelope, 
though not so thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man 
who has not handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest 
lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from 
it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with 
horses’ hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks in it. 
Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded 
Indiamen chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks, 
what do the sailors do ? They do not suspend between them, at the 
point of coming contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or wood. 
No, they hold there a large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped 
in the thickest and toughest of ox-hide. That bravely and uninjured 
takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken handspikes 
and iron crowbars. By itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious 
fact I drive at. But supplementary to this, it has hypothetically 
occurred to me, that as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming 
bladder in them, capable, at will, of distension or contraction ; and as 
the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no such provision in him; 
considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable manner in which he now 
depresses his head altogether beneath the surface, and anon swims 
with it high elevated out of the water; considering the unobstructed 
elasticity of its envelope ; considering the unique interior of his head ; 
it has hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung- 
celled honeycombs there may possibly have some hitherto unknown 
and unsuspected connection with the outer air, so as to be suscep- 
tible to atmospheric distention and contraction. If this be so, fancy 
the irresistibleness of that might, to which the most impalpable and 
destructive of all elements contributes. 
Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, unin- 
jurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within ; there swims behind 
it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as 
