THE WHITE WHALE 359 
at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulf weed in their new-born sight. 
Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. 
One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed 
hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, 
and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though his body 
seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so 
lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all 
ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar’s 
bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly 
retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby’s ears newly ar- 
rived from foreign parts. 
“Line! line!” cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; “him fast! 
him fast ! — Who line him ? Who struck ? — Two- whale ; one big, one 
little!” 
“What ails ye, man ?” cried Starbuck. 
“Look-e here,” said Queequeg, pointing down. 
As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hun- 
dreds of fathoms of rope ; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, 
and shows the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling 
towards the air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord 
of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to 
its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this natural 
line, with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the hempen 
one, so that the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets 
of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw 
young Leviathan amours in the deep . 1 
And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consterna- 
tions and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely 
and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely 
1 The Sperm whale, as with all other species of the leviathan, but unlike 
most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a gestation which 
may probably be set down at nine months, producing but one at a time; 
though in some few known instances giving birth to an Esau and Jacob, a 
contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously situated, one on 
each side of the anus; but the breasts themselves extend upwards from that. 
When by chance these pervious parts of a nursing whale are cut by the 
hunter’s lance, the mother’s pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolour 
the sea for rods. The rnilk is very sweet and rich ; it has been tasted by man, 
