Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

The Case as the Great Heidelburgh Tun

The Case is compared to the famous Heidelburgh Tun, a renowned wine cask. Just as that great tierce was mystically carved in front with decorative elements, the whale’s vast plaited forehead forms countless strange devices serving as emblematical adornment for this wondrous tun. The analogy emphasizes the remarkable nature of this anatomical feature.

Spermaceti Properties and Content

The Case contains by far the most precious of all the whale’s oily vintages—spermaceti. This substance exists in its most valuable state within the Case: absolutely pure, limped, and odoriferous. During the whale’s life, spermaceti remains perfectly fluid. However, upon exposure to air after death, it quickly begins to concrete, sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots similar to the formation of thin delicate ice on water.

Large Whale Spermaceti Yield

A large whale’s case typically yields approximately five hundred gallons of sperm. Due to unavoidable circumstances during extraction, however, considerable amounts are spilled, leak away, or are otherwise irrevocably lost in the precarious business of securing what is possible.

Case Inner Membrane Lining

The Heidelburgh Tun of legend was lined with fine and costly materials, yet in superlative richness, those materials could not compare to the silken pearl-colored membrane that forms the inner surface of the sperm whale’s case. This lining resembles the lining of a fine pelisse, presenting an extraordinary organic interior surface.

Heidelburgh Tun Dimensions

The Heidelburgh Tun of the sperm whale embraces the entire length of the top of the head. Since the whale’s head constitutes one-third of its total body length, and assuming an eighty-foot length for a good-sized whale, the depth of the tun measures more than twenty-six feet when hoisted lengthwise up and down against a ship’s side.

Whale Decapitation Precautions

During decapitation of the whale, the operator’s instrument approaches very close to where an entrance will be subsequently forced into the spermaceti magazine. Therefore, the operator must exercise extreme caution to prevent a careless, untimely stroke from invading this sanctuary and wastefully releasing its invaluable contents. The decapitated end of the head is eventually elevated out of the water and retained in position by enormous cutting tackles, whose complex rope arrangements create quite a wilderness of hempen combinations in that quarter.

Tapping the Heidelburgh Tun

With the preliminary anatomical context established, the narrative invites the reader to attend to the extraordinary and potentially fatal operation by which the sperm whale’s great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.

CAPÍTULO 78. Cistern and Buckets.

This chapter narrates a dramatic incident during the tryworks of the Pequod, involving the harpooner Tashtego and his near-fatal fall into the sperm whale’s head, ultimately rescued by Queequeg.

Tashtego climbs to bail the Tun

Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft and runs out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm directly over the hoisted Tun. He secures a light tackle called a whip, consisting of two parts traveling through a single-sheaved block, and descends hand-over-hand to the summit of the whale’s head. From this elevated position, he resembles a Turkish Muezzin calling people to prayer from a tower. Using a short-handled spade, he cautiously searches for the proper place to break into the Tun, sounding the walls like a treasure-hunter. A stout iron-bound bucket, like a well-bucket, is attached to one end of the whip while the other end is stretched across the deck, held by several hands. Tashtego guides the bucket into the Tun using a very long pole, and it returns bubbling with sperm, like a dairy-maid’s pail of new milk. This process continues until nearly twenty feet of the pole have been forced down into the cistern.

Tashtego falls into the Tun

As the crew bales the sperm for some time, filling several tubs with fragrant sperm, a sudden accident occurs. Whether Tashtego heedlessly released his hold on the cables suspending the head, or the footing was treacherous and oozy—or whether the Evil One intervened—no one can say exactly. But as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket comes up, Tashtego drops head-foremost into the great Tun, disappearing with a horrible oily gurgling.