Bear in mind, too, that under
these untoward circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh;
and in that subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single
peep into the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully
steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide
the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion into the skull.
Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb's boast, that he demanded but ten
minutes to behead a sperm whale?
When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there
by a cable till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong
to a small whale it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately
disposed of. But, with a full grown leviathan this is impossible;
for the sperm whale's head embraces nearly one third of his
entire bulk, and completely to suspend such a burden as that,
even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this were as vain a thing
as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers' scales.
The Pequod's whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head
was hoisted against the ship's side--about half way out of the sea,
so that it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element.
And there with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it,
by reason of the enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head,
and every yard-arm on that side projecting like a crane over
the waves; there, that blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod's
waist like the giant Holofernes's from the girdle of Judith.
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