Call me Ishmael. Years ago, finding myself poor and aimless on land, I decided to sail and view the watery world. This is my method for curing melancholy and regulating my blood. Whenever my mouth grows grim, or my soul feels like a damp, drizzly November, I know it is time to leave. The urge becomes undeniable when I pause before coffin before warehouses, trail behind funerals, or feel a manic impulse to knock hats off in the street. Going to sea is my alternative to suicide. While Cato died on his sword with a flourish, I quietly board a ship. This impulse is not unique; almost all men feel a magnetic pull toward the ocean.
Focusing on the full front view of the head, Ishmael finds the aspect sublime. Unlike human or animal brows that signify the presence of a mind, the whale presents a vast, pleated forehead without distinct features—no eyes, ears, or mouth. This blank, massive brow conveys a god-like dignity and a sense of doom that surpasses all other living things. He argues that the whale’s genius is defined not by speech, but by its pyramidical silence. Suggesting that ancient cultures would have deified such a tongueless creature, perhaps placing it higher than the crocodile, he concludes that the whale’s brow is an unreadable hieroglyphic. Lacking a Champollion to decipher it, the “awful Chaldee” of the whale’s face remains an inscrutable text beyond the reach of even the most learned scholars.
Ishmael examines the phrenology of the Sperm Whale, noting that its massive skull, measuring twenty feet in length, conceals a tiny brain hidden deep within the spermaceti. To the observer, the vast outworks of the head present a false brow, making the true brain an inaccessible citadel. When the skull is unloaded and viewed from the rear, it strikingly resembles a human skull, though the lack of bumps indicating self-esteem or veneration suggests an inhuman, exalted potency.
Critiquing traditional phrenologists for ignoring the spine, Ishmael proposes a “spinal theory” of character, arguing that a man’s nobility is better read in his backbone than his skull. Applying this to the whale, he highlights the enormous size of the spinal canal and cord, which maintains a girth nearly equal to the brain for a considerable distance. He argues this spinal magnitude compensates for the small brain. Finally, Ishmael identifies the whale’s prominent hump as the external sign of a massive vertebra, designating it the “organ of firmness or indomitableness,” a trait the crew will soon witness firsthand.
The Pequod met the German ship Jungfrau on the predestinated day, her master Derick De Deer of Bremen approaching with curious urgency. While still at a distance, the German captain stood in his boat’s bows rather than the stern, waving something that sparked debate aboard the Pequod. Starbuck guessed a lamp-feeder, Stubb joked about a coffee-pot, but Flask saw the truth: an oil-can. Derick came begging. His ship was “clean”—empty of oil—and his crew retired to their hammocks in profound darkness each night. Ahab, indifferent to the German’s complete ignorance of the White Whale, permitted the transaction. Derick departed with his necessities supplied, but before he could reach his vessel, whales were raised simultaneously from both ships’ mast-heads. The German slewed his boat around without even depositing his oil-can, eager for the chase.
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