Summary: She wanted to hear me read from Moby-Dick, so I opened the book to a random chapter.<br> -The Voice before the Void<br> “The Fountain”<br> from Moby-Dick; or, The Whale<br> Herman Melville<br> That for six thousand years–and no one knows how many millions of ages before–the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings–that all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o’clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapour–this is surely a noteworthy thing.<br> Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items<br> contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their<br> gills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times<br> is combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or<br> a cod might live a century, and never once raise its head above the<br> surface. But owing to his marked internal structure which gives him<br> regular lungs, like a human being’s, the whale can only live by<br> inhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the<br> necessity for his periodical visits to the upper world. But he<br> cannot in any degree breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary<br> attitude, the Sperm Whale’s mouth is buried at least eight feet<br> beneath the surface; and what is still more, his windpipe has no<br> connexion with his mouth. No, he breathes through his spiracle<br> alone; and this is on the top of his head.<br> If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function<br> indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a<br> certain element, which being subsequently brought into contact with<br> the blood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not<br> think I shall err; though I may possibly use some superfluous<br> scientific words. Assume it, and it follows that if all the blood in<br> a man could be aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his<br> nostrils and not fetch another for a considerable time. That is to<br> say, he would then live without breathing. Anomalous as it may seem,<br> this is precisely the case with the whale, who systematically lives,<br> by intervals, his full hour and more (when at the bottom) without<br> drawing a single breath, or so much as in any way inhaling a particle<br> of air; for, remember, he has no gills. How is this? Between his<br> ribs and on each side of his spine he is supplied with a remarkable<br> involved Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels,<br> when he quits the surface, are completely distended with oxygenated<br> blood. So that for an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the sea,<br> he carries a surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camel<br> crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus supply of drink for<br> future use in its four supplementary stomachs. The anatomical fact<br> of this labyrinth is indisputable; and that the supposition founded<br> upon it is reasonable and true, seems the more cogent to me, when I<br> consider the otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in<br> HAVING HIS SPOUTINGS OUT, as the fishermen phrase it. This is what I<br> mean. If unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale<br> will continue there for a period of time exactly uniform with all his<br> other unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets<br> seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he<br> ...
