I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter;
but by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided
in the same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense
and elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded,
may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality.
And thus there seems a reason in all things, even in law.
CHAPTER 91
The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud
"In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch
of this Leviathan, insufferable fetor denying not inquiry."
SIR T. BROWNE, V. E.
It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted,
and when we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapory,
mid-day sea, that the many noses on the Pequod's deck proved
more vigilant discoverers than the three pairs of eyes aloft.
A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was smelt in the sea.
"I will bet something now," said Stubb, "that somewhere hereabouts
are some of those drugged whales we tickled the other day.
I thought they would keel up before long."
Presently, the vapors in advance slid aside; and there in the distance
lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must
be alongside.
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