第七十五章 露脊鲸的头——对比观
穿过甲板，现在让我们好好长久地端详一下露脊鲸的头。
正如伟岸的抹香鲸的头在总体形状上可比作罗马战车（尤其是前方，圆阔饱满）；那么， broad望去，露脊鲸的头颇不雅观地近似一只巨大的圆头鞋。两百年前一位老荷兰航海家将其形状比作鞋匠的楦头。而在这同一个楦头或鞋里， nursery tale里那个带着成群儿女的老妪，连同她所有的后代，都可以舒舒服服地安身。
可是当你走近这颗巨头，它便随你视角的不同，呈现出不同的面貌。若立于其顶，望那两个F形的喷孔，你会把整颗头当作一把巨大的低音提琴，而这些气孔便是其音板上的孔眼。再者，若你只凝注于这团巨物顶端那奇异的、有脊如冠、似梳的硬壳——这绿意盎然、附满藤壶的东西，格陵兰人称为露脊鲸的“王冠”，南方渔夫叫作“帽盔”；只盯着它，你会以为那是某棵大橡树的树干，枝桠间有个鸟巢。无论如何，当你瞧见那些栖居在这帽盔上的活螃蟹，几乎必定会生出这般念头；除非你的想象已被赋予它的术语“王冠”所固定，那样你便会饶有兴味地想：这庞然怪物实则是海中戴冠的王者，他那绿冠竟以如此奇妙的方式为他而成。但这鲸若称王，也是个极愠怒的家伙，配不上王冠。看那下垂的下唇！何等巨大的闷气与噘嘴！按木匠尺度，那闷气与噘嘴约二十英尺长、五英尺深；这闷气与噘嘴能给你榨出五百加仑有余的油。
如今大可惋惜，这不幸的鲸竟是兔唇。裂口约一英尺宽。想必其母在某一重要时段正沿秘鲁海岸游弋，地震令海滩裂开。越过这嘴唇，如越光滑门槛，我们滑入口腔。说实话，若我在马基诺，定以为这是印第安人棚屋的内部。天哪！约拿走的便是此路？顶高约十二英尺，斜成颇锐之角，似有正规脊杆；而这些带肋、拱起、多毛的侧壁，向我们呈现那些奇绝的、半竖的、弯刀形的鲸骨片，每侧约三百片，自上首或冠骨垂下，构成那威尼斯式百叶窗，他处已略提及。这些骨片边缘缀以毛纤维，露脊鲸藉此滤水，张嘴巡游于饵料海以觅小鱼时，将小鱼留于错综间。在天然排布的骨百叶中央，有某些奇特的斑痕、弯弧、凹穴与脊线，一些捕鲸人据以推算其龄，如据橡树年轮推龄。虽此准之确然远非可证，却有类比之可能。无论如何，若我们信之，必得认露脊鲸之龄远长于初见所感之合理。
古时，关于这些百叶似盛行极怪异的幻想。Purchas中一航海者称其为鲸口内奇绝的“胡须”*；另一称“猪鬃”；Hackluyt中第三位老绅士用语优雅：“其上颌每侧生约二百五十鳍，拱于舌上、口之两侧。”
*这提醒我们，露脊鲸确有种胡须，或毋宁说髭须，乃下颌外端上部几缕散白毛。有时这簇毛给他本肃穆之面添几分匪气。
如人所知，这些“猪鬃”“鳍”“胡须”“百叶”或随你叫什么，供女士制衣骨与诸硬衬之物。但此需久已衰。骨之荣耀在安妮女王时，当时裙撑为尚。那些古妇虽在鲸口之中，如你所言，仍欢然走动；今我们遇雨，亦以类同的无虑，飞避于同一下颌以求庇；伞便是张于同骨上的帐。
但此刻暂忘百叶与胡须，立于露脊鲸口中，重新环顾。见这些骨列如柱、井然排布，你岂不以为置身哈勒姆大管风琴内、望其千管？为琴之地毯，我们有最柔土耳其毯——舌，如胶着于口腔底。其肥嫩易撕裂，吊上甲板时然。眼前此舌；匆匆一瞥，我料其为六桶者；即约出油六桶。
此前你必已明悟我起首之言——抹香鲸与露脊鲸头几全异。总言之：露脊鲸头无巨鲸脑井；无象牙齿；无如抹香鲸之长细下颌。抹香鲸亦无那些骨百叶；无巨下唇；舌几无。又，露脊鲸有两外喷孔，抹香鲸仅一。
现在，对这些可敬的戴帽之头作最后一望，趁其尚并卧；因一将不久沉海，不录；另一亦将不久从之。
你能捕抹香鲸头之神情否？即其死时之神情，唯额上较长皱似已淡。我想其宽额满溢草原般的静，生于对死之漠然。但看另一头之神情。看那惊人下唇，偶压船侧，紧抱颌。这整头岂不似言对死之巨实决？此露脊鲸我视为斯多葛；抹香鲸，柏拉图者，暮年或取斯宾诺莎。
Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right
Whale’s head.
As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale’s head may be compared to a
Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly
rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale’s head bears a rather
inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred
years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a
shoemaker’s last. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the
nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be
lodged, she and all her progeny.
But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume different
aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on its summit
and look at these two F-shaped spoutholes, you would take the whole
head for an enormous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in
its sounding-board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange,
crested, comb-like incrustation on the top of the mass—this green,
barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the “crown,” and the
Southern fishers the “bonnet” of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes
solely on this, you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak,
with a bird’s nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch those
live crabs that nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost
sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the
technical term “crown” also bestowed upon it; in which case you will
take great interest in thinking how this mighty monster is actually a
diademed king of the sea, whose green crown has been put together for
him in this marvellous manner. But if this whale be a king, he is a
very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look at that hanging lower
lip! what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by
carpenter’s measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a
sulk and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.
A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped.
The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an
important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when
earthquakes caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery
threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at
Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam. Good
Lord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is about twelve feet
high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a regular
ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us
with those wondrous, half vertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone,
say three hundred on a side, which depending from the upper part of the
head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere
been cursorily mentioned. The edges of these bones are fringed with
hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in
whose intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes
through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central blinds of
bone, as they stand in their natural order, there are certain curious
marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen calculate the
creature’s age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the
certainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the
savor of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we
must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance
will seem reasonable.
In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies
concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous
“whiskers” inside of the whale’s mouth;* another, “hogs’ bristles”; a
third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language:
“There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his
upper _chop_, which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth.”
*This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or
rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the
upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these tufts
impart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn
countenance.
As every one knows, these same “hogs’ bristles,” “fins,” “whiskers,”
“blinds,” or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and
other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand has
long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne’s time that the bone was
in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And as those
ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of the whale, as
you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtlessness, do we
nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the umbrella being a
tent spread over the same bone.
But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and,
standing in the Right Whale’s mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing all
these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not
think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its
thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of the softest
Turkey—the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor of the
mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting
it on deck. This particular tongue now before us; at a passing glance I
should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it will yield you about that
amount of oil.
Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started
with—that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely
different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale’s there is no
great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible
of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale’s. Nor in the Sperm Whale are
there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely
anything of a tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external
spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.
Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet
lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other
will not be very long in following.
Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale’s there? It is the same
he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now
faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like
placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the
other head’s expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by
accident against the vessel’s side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw.
Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical
resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a
Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in
his latter years.
