{"id":"01KFNR89HRFR4HCG0KR56619RP","cid":"bafkreigm52d2cyoa5q3ysulkjuufh4jeb4mzszf2fqesfkh4gpudkdettu","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":12284,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:04.731Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 0","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":12215,"text":"CHAPTER 69. The Funeral.\r\n\r\n“Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!”\r\n\r\nThe vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the\r\nbeheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue,\r\nit has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal.\r\nSlowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and\r\nsplashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with\r\nrapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many\r\ninsulting poniards in the whale. The vast white headless phantom floats\r\nfurther and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats,\r\nwhat seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the\r\nmurderous din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that\r\nhideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon\r\nthe fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that\r\ngreat mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite\r\nperspectives.\r\n\r\nThere’s a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all\r\nin pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or\r\nspeckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween,\r\nif peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral\r\nthey most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from\r\nwhich not the mightiest whale is free.\r\n\r\nNor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost\r\nsurvives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war\r\nor blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring\r\nthe swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in\r\nthe sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the\r\nwhale’s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the\r\nlog—_shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts: beware!_ And for years\r\nafterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly\r\nsheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there\r\nwhen a stick was held. There’s your law of precedents; there’s your\r\nutility of traditions; there’s the story of your obstinate survival of\r\nold beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in\r\nthe air! There’s orthodoxy!\r\n\r\nThus, while in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror\r\nto his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a\r\nworld.\r\n\r\nAre you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than\r\nthe Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe\r\nin them.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.\r\n\r\nIt should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping\r\nthe body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the\r\nSperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced\r\nwhale surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason.\r\n\r\nConsider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck;\r\non the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that\r\nvery place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the\r\nsurgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening\r\nbetween him and his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a\r\ndiscoloured, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear\r\nin mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut\r\nmany feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneous manner, without\r\nso much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus\r\nmade, he must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts,\r\nand exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion\r\ninto the skull. Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb’s boast, that he\r\ndemanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale?\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 0"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84DET1T761JXST1X6H45","peer_label":"69","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84DET1T761JXST1X6H45","peer_label":"69","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR89R9PW1C33PFZ6EGPK3G","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:05.068Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:16.549Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}