Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

  CHAPTER 88

  Schools and Schoolmasters

  The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herdof Sperm Whales, and there was also then given the probablecause inducing those vast aggregations.

  Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as musthave been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands areoccasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each.Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two sorts;those composed almost entirely of females, and those mustering nonebut young vigorous males, or bulls as they are familiarly designated.

  In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably seea male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm,evinces his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flightof his ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman,swimming about over the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by allthe solaces and endearments of the harem. The contrast between thisOttoman and his concubines is striking; because, while he is alwaysof the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth,are not more than one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male.They are comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed halfa dozen yards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied,that upon the whole they are hereditarily entitled to en bon point.

  It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in theirindolent ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for everon the move in leisurely search of variety. You meet themon the Line in time for the full flower of the Equatorialfeeding season, having just returned, perhaps, from spendingthe summer in the Northern seas, and so cheating summer of allunpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time they have loungedup and down the promenade of the Equator awhile, they startfor the Oriental waters in anticipation of the cool season there,and so evade the other excessive temperature of the year.

  When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strangesuspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on hisinteresting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan comingthat way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies,with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away!High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like himare to be permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss;though do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notoriousLothario out of his bed; for alas! all fish bed in common.As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible duels amongtheir rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes cometo deadly battle, and all for love. They fence with their longlower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving forthe supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers.Not a few are captured having the deep scars of these encounters,--furrowed heads, broken teeth, scolloped fins; and in some instances,wrenched and dislocated mouths.

  But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself awayat the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it very divertingto watch that lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk amongthem again and revels there awhile, still in tantalizing vicinityto young Lothario, like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping amonghis thousand concubines. Granting other whales to be in sight,the fisherman will seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks;for these Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength,and hence their unctuousness is small. As for the sons andthe daughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters musttake care of themselves; at least, with only the maternal help.For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named,my Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however muchfor the bower; and so, being a great traveller, he leaves hisanonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic.In good time, nevertheless, as the ardor of youth declines;as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses;in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk;then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens;our Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stageof life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary,sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians andparallels saying his prayers, and warning each young Leviathanfrom his amorous errors.

  Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so isthe lord and master of that school technically known as the schoolmaster.It is therefore not in strict character, however admirably satirical,that after going to school himself, he should then go abroadinculcating not what he learned there, but the folly of it.His title, schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived fromthe name bestowed upon the harem itself, but some have surmisedthat the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale,must have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sortof a country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days,and what was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated intosome of his pupils.

  The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmasterwhale betakes himself in his advancing years, is trueof 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 noone near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to wifein 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 proverbiallythe most dangerous to encounter; excepting those wondrousgrey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met, and these will fightyou 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 themany more than he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They soonrelinquish this turbulence though, and when about three-fourths grown,break up, and separately go about in quest of settlements,that is, harems.

  Another point of difference between the male and female schoolsis still more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strikea Forty-barrel-bull--poor devil! all his comrades quit him.But strike a member of the harem school, and her companions swimaround her with every token of concern, sometimes lingeringso near her and so long, as themselves to fall a prey.