There's your law of precedents;
there's your utility of traditions; there's the story of your
obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth,
and now not even hovering in the air! There's orthodoxy!
Thus, while in the life the great whale's body may have been a real
terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic
to a world.
Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts
than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson
who believe in them.
CHAPTER 70
The Sphynx
It should not have been omitted that previous to completely
stripping the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded.
Now, the beheading of the Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat,
upon which experienced whale surgeons very much pride themselves:
and not without reason.
Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck;
on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that
very place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the surgeon
must operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening between him
and his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a discolored, rolling,
and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea.
Pages:
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510