And not till those seventy breaths are told, will he finally
go down to stay out his full term below. Remark, however,
that in different individuals these rates are different;
but in any one they are alike. Now, why should the whale
thus insist upon having his spoutings out, unless it be
to replenish his reservoir of air, ere descending for good?
How obvious it is it, too, that this necessity for the whale's
rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase.
For not by hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught,
when sailing a thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight.
Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the great necessities
that strike the victory to thee!
In man, breathing is incessantly going on--one breath only serving
for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has
to attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will.
But the Sperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday
of his time.
It has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-hole;
if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water,
then I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of smell
seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that at all answers
to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so clogged with
two elements, it could not be expected to have the power of smelling.
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