342 
MOBY DICK; OR 
his spine he is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth 
of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface, are 
completely distended with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or 
more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a surplus stock of 
vitality in him, just as the camel crossing the waterless desert carries 
a surplus supply of drink for future use in its four supplementary 
stomachs. The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable ; 
and that the supposition founded upon it is reasonable and true, 
seems the more cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise inex- 
plicable obstinacy of that leviathan in having his spoutings out, as 
the fishermen phrase it. This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon 
rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will continue there for a 
period of time exactly uniform with all his other unmolested risings. 
Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires 
seventy breaths ; then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have 
his seventy breaths over again, to a minute. How, if after he fetches 
a few breaths you alarm him, so that he sounds, he will be always 
dodging up again to make good his regular allowance of air. And not 
till those seventy breaths are told, will he finally go down to stay 
out his full term below. Remark, however, that in different indi- 
viduals these rates are different; but in any one they are alike. 
How, why should the whale thus insist upon having his spoutings 
out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air, ere descending for 
good? How obvious is it, too, that this necessity for the whale’s ris- 
ing exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase. For not by 
hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught, when sailing a 
thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight. Hot so much thy skill, 
then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike the victory to 
thee! 
In man, breathing is incessantly going on — one breath only serv- 
ing for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he 
has to attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he 
will. But the Sperm Whale only breathes about one-seventh or Sun- 
day of his time. 
It has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout- 
hole; if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with 
