I left out one crucial detail earlier. Before we stripped the massive whale’s body clean of blubber, we first cut off its head.
Chopping off a sperm whale’s head is no simple task. It’s a precise, skilled anatomical operation, one that every experienced whaler takes great pride in pulling off—and they have every right to be proud.
To understand how impressive this feat is, you have to picture the full scenario.
Whales don’t have a proper neck like humans or other animals. The spot where the head connects to the body is actually the thickest, toughest part of its entire frame.
On top of that, the whaler doing the cutting works from high above the whale, roughly eight to ten feet away from their target. The beast’s body is half-submerged in dark, churning, unstable ocean water that’s constantly rising and crashing.
Working under these terrible conditions, a sailor has to slice several feet deep through dense, tough flesh. He can’t see a thing inside the tight, closing cut he’s making.
Blindly, he must avoid all the vital, delicate tissue around the cut, and perfectly slice through the whale’s spine exactly where it connects to the skull.
It’s no wonder Stubb once boasted he could behead a full-grown sperm whale in just ten minutes. That kind of speed and skill is truly astonishing.
Right after the head is severed, we let it drift behind the ship, tied fast with a rope. We leave it hanging there while we finish stripping the blubber off the main body.
Once the blubber work is done, small whale heads get hoisted fully on deck to be processed. But a full-grown sperm whale’s head is far too heavy for that.
A whale’s head makes up nearly one-third of its total weight. Trying to lift that enormous bulk entirely aboard the ship with our strongest rigs would be as ridiculous as weighing a whole barn on a jeweler’s tiny precision scale.
For the whale we’d killed on the Pequod, we settled on a middle solution.
After decapitating it and stripping the body clean, we hoisted the massive head up against the ship’s side. Half of it hung above the waves, while the ocean still buoyed up most of its weight to keep the ship from tipping too far.
The heavy pull of the head dragged the lower mast downward, tilting the entire ship steeply toward the water. Every yardarm on that side jutted out over the waves like a wooden crane.
Dripping fresh blood, the giant head hung at the ship’s midsection, just like the giant warrior Holofernes’ head hanging from Judith’s belt in the ancient tale.
By the time we finished this final gruesome job, it was noon.
The exhausted sailors headed below deck for their midday meal. The once noisy, chaotic deck fell completely silent.
A thick, golden, peaceful calm settled over the sea. It spread outward like endless, silent lotus petals covering the entire ocean surface under the bright sun.
After a short stretch of perfect stillness, Captain Ahab stepped alone out of his cabin.
He paced slowly across the rear deck, then stopped to stare out over the ship’s side.
He climbed carefully into the ship’s side rigging, grabbed Stubb’s long cutting spade—the one left behind from the whale’s beheading—and drove its sharp blade into the bottom of the half-submerged whale head.
He propped the spade’s handle under his arm like a crutch, leaned far out over the water, and fixed his gaze intently on the massive head hanging before him.
It was a dark, hooded shape, hanging motionless in the heavy midday calm. It looked just like the silent, mysterious Sphinx sitting alone in the empty desert.
“Speak, thou great ancient head,” Ahab muttered quietly to himself.
“You have no beard, yet patches of sea moss make you look gray and aged. Speak, mighty skull. Tell me the secret hidden deep inside you.”
“No diver has ever gone as deep as you have. This head, now glinting in the sun, has moved through the darkest foundations of this world.”
“You’ve seen the forgotten shipwrecks and sunken fleets, rotting away in the dark abyss. You’ve seen crushed hopes and rusted anchors lying buried on the ocean floor.”
“You’ve rested among the countless drowned bones that ballast this violent, unforgiving earth. That dark underwater world is your true, oldest home.”
“You’ve traveled where no bell can ring and no human diver can reach. You’ve lain beside countless dead sailors—men their grieving mothers would have given everything to bring home.”
“You’ve watched lovers leap from burning ships, sinking heart-in-heart beneath the mocking waves, staying faithful to each other when even heaven seemed to abandon them.”
“You’ve seen murdered sailors tossed overboard by pirates in the dead of night, falling endlessly into the hungry dark sea while their killers sailed on unpunished. You’ve watched innocent ships get struck down by lightning, ships that would have carried loving men back to their waiting families.”
“Oh great head! You’ve witnessed enough horror and mystery to shake the stars and turn the most faithful man doubtful. And yet you stay completely silent—not a single word to tell what you know!”
“Sail ho!”
A loud, triumphant shout rang down from the lookout perched high on the main mast.
“Ah! Good news at last,” Ahab cried.
He instantly straightened up, the dark storm of brooding anger clearing from his face in an instant.
“A cheerful cry cutting through this deathly calm—it could soften even the hardest soul. Where is she?”
“Three points off the starboard bow, sir! And she’s bringing a fresh breeze right toward us!”
“Better and better!” Ahab exclaimed.
“I wish Saint Paul himself rode that wind to break this dead stillness! Oh nature, oh the human soul! The hidden connections between the two are far too deep for any words to describe.”
“Every tiny atom that moves in the physical world holds a perfect, hidden mirror in the thoughts and feelings of the human mind.”