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He strung up the teeth of the shark as a necklace for her, gathered the finest shells for her anklets, and always gave her the fattest slice of whale's meat to her portion. The story of Tackanash, who very soon returned to Waquoit, and his description of the beauties of Nope, carried many of the Pawkunnawkuts thither to live.
But though similar disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in the fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale's infernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent.
All alive to his jeopardy, he was going "head out"; that part obliquely projecting from the mad yeast which he brewed.* *It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the entire interior of the sperm whale's enormous head consists. Though apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about him.
"I came in through the whale's throat," said Raven as politely as he knew how, for the woman was young and fair to look upon. Moreover, he had already guessed that she was the inua or spirit of the whale. "I should like to stay a while." "As you cannot get out at present, it seems that you will have to stay.
If you'd told him he'd been swallowed by a mackerel he wouldn't have said no. But I've helped kill a good many whales yes, and I've helped cut 'em up, too and I know what they look like inside. No man, whether his name was Jonah or Jehoshaphat, could have lived three days in a whale's stomach. How'd he breathe in there, eh? Cal'late the whale had ventilators and a skylight in his main deck?
Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor.
It is certain that the mouth indirectly communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot be proved that this is for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle. Because the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be, when in feeding he accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm Whale's food is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout even if he would.
It was soon over, the dishes soon washed, and by seven o'clock the Applebys and Tubbses gathered in the sacred parlor, where ordinary summerites were not welcome, where the family crayon-enlargements hung above the green plush settee from Boston, which was flanked by the teak table which Uncle Joe's Uncle Ira had brought from China, and the whale's vertebræ without which no high-caste Cape Cod household is virtuous.
Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature's skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in point of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption; because you cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the whale's body but that same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer of any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that be but the skin?
Gilman also told us a story of the bishop's catechizing the children in a Boston church, when, having taken the scriptural account of Jonah and carried the prophet into the whale's belly, he asked very impressively, "And now, children, how do you suppose that Jonah felt?" Whereupon little Sohier, son of the noted lawyer, piped out, "Down in the mouth, sir."
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