Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face
of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass
of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.
There's a most doleful and most mocking funeral!
The sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all
punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would
have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it;
but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce.
Oh, horrible vulturism of earth! from which not the mightiest
whale is free.
Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful
ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some
timid man-of-war or blundering discovery-vessel from afar,
when the distance obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still
shows the white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray
heaving high against it; straightway the whale's unharming corpse,
with trembling fingers is set down in the log--shoals, rocks,
and breakers hereabouts: beware! And for years afterwards,
perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep
leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped
there when a stick was held.
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