THE WHITE WHALE 
317 
after the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had 
made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; 
then, dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and 
upwards, and so hauled out our poor Tash by the head. He averred,, 
that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well 
knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great 
trouble ; — he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, 
had wrought a somerset upon the Indian ; so that with the next trial, he 
came forth in the good old way — head foremost. As for the great head 
itself, that was doing as well as could be expected. 
And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Quee- 
queg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully 
accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently 
hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. 
I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header’s will be sure 
to seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may 
have either seen or heard of some one’s falling into a cistern ashore; 
an accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too 
than the Indian’s, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb 
of the Sperm Whale’s well. 
But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this ? We 
thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the 
lightest and most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink 
in an element of a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have 
thee there. Hot at all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell 
in, the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving 
little but the dense tendinous wall of the well — a double-welded, ham- 
mered substance, as I have before said, much heavier than the sea 
water, and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost. But the 
tendency to rapid sinking in this substance was in the present instance 
materially counteracted by the other parts of the head remaining un- 
detached from it, so that it sank very slowly and deliberately indeed, 
affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing his agile dexterities 
on the run, as you may say. 
How, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very 
precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of 
