The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster
whale betakes himself in his advancing years, is true
of all aged Sperm Whales. Almost universally, a lone whale--
as a solitary Leviathan is called--proves an ancient one.
Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no
one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to wife
in the wilderness of waters, and the best of wives she is,
though she keeps so many moody secrets.
The schools composing none but young and vigorous males,
previously mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools.
For while those female whales are characteristically timid,
the young males, or forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them,
are by far the most pugnacious of all Leviathans, and proverbially
the most dangerous to encounter; excepting those wondrous
grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met, and these will fight
you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.
The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools.
Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun,
and wickedness, tumbling round the world at such a reckless,
rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them
any more than he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard.
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