The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted
by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it.
It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved
with horses' hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks in it.
Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large,
loaded Indian-men chance to crowd and crush towards each other
in the docks, what do the sailors do? They do not suspend
between them, at the point of coming contact, any merely
hard substance, like iron or wood. No, they hold there a large,
round wad of tow and cork, enveloped in the thickest and toughest
of ox-hide. That bravely and uninjured takes the jam which would
have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars. By
itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at.
But supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me,
that as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder
in them, capable, at will, of distension or contraction;
and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no such provision
in him; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable manner
in which he now depresses his head altogether beneath the surface,
and anon swims with it high elevated out of the water;
considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope;
considering the unique interior of his head; it has
hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical
lung-celled honeycombs there may possibly have some hitherto
unknown and unsuspected connexion with the outer air, so as
to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and contraction.
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