{"id":"01KJNXJV8QJVWVH55TEGHZNE8M","cid":"bafkreibailuoo4lklsuwfhdrsfftcpyqzdkscobdalknmnobag4s6zzlzy","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":994072,"char_start":986130,"chunk_index":139,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1986,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"roast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been,\r\nIshmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone;\r\nthe privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters,\r\nridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-work of\r\nleviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and\r\ncheeseries in his bowels.\r\n\r\nI confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far\r\nbeneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed\r\nwith an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged\r\nto, a small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his\r\npoke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the\r\nheads of the lances. Think you I let that chance go, without using my\r\nboat-hatchet and jack-knife, and breaking the seal and reading all the\r\ncontents of that young cub?\r\n\r\nAnd as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their\r\ngigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted\r\nto my late royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides.\r\nFor being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey\r\nof Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with\r\nthe lord of Tranque, at his retired palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side\r\nglen not very far distant from what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his\r\ncapital.\r\n\r\nAmong many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted\r\nwith a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had brought\r\ntogether in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of his\r\npeople could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices,\r\nchiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes; and\r\nall these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the\r\nwonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores.\r\n\r\nChief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an\r\nunusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his\r\nhead against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings\r\nseemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been stripped of\r\nits fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun,\r\nthen the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where\r\na grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.\r\n\r\nThe ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebræ were carved with\r\nArsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests\r\nkept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again\r\nsent forth its vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough, the\r\nterrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung\r\nsword that so affrighted Damocles.\r\n\r\nIt was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy Glen;\r\nthe trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the\r\nindustrious earth beneath was as a weaver’s loom, with a gorgeous\r\ncarpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and\r\nwoof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their\r\nladen branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the\r\nmessage-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. Through the\r\nlacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving\r\nthe unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!—pause!—one\r\nword!—whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all\r\nthese ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!—stay thy hand!—but one single\r\nword with thee! Nay—the shuttle flies—the figures float from forth the\r\nloom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god,\r\nhe weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal\r\nvoice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened;\r\nand only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak\r\nthrough it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken\r\nwords that are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words\r\nare plainly heard without the walls, bursting from the opened\r\ncasements. Thereby have villainies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be\r\nheedful; for so, in all this din of the great world’s loom, thy\r\nsubtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.\r\n\r\nNow, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the\r\ngreat, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging—a gigantic idler! Yet,\r\nas the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around\r\nhim, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over\r\nwith the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but\r\nhimself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim\r\ngod wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.\r\n\r\nNow, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and saw the\r\nskull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real\r\njet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as an\r\nobject of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests\r\nshould swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced\r\nbefore this skeleton—brushed the vines aside—broke through the ribs—and\r\nwith a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid its many\r\nwinding, shaded colonnades and arbours. But soon my line was out; and\r\nfollowing it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered. I saw no\r\nliving thing within; naught was there but bones.\r\n\r\nCutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the\r\nskeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me\r\ntaking the altitude of the final rib, “How now!” they shouted; “Dar’st\r\nthou measure this our god! That’s for us.” “Aye, priests—well, how long\r\ndo ye make him, then?” But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them,\r\nconcerning feet and inches; they cracked each other’s sconces with\r\ntheir yard-sticks—the great skull echoed—and seizing that lucky chance,\r\nI quickly concluded my own admeasurements.\r\n\r\nThese admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first, be it\r\nrecorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied\r\nmeasurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can\r\nrefer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell\r\nme, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where\r\nthey have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise,\r\nI have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire, they\r\nhave what the proprietors call “the only perfect specimen of a\r\nGreenland or River Whale in the United States.” Moreover, at a place in\r\nYorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford\r\nConstable has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of\r\nmoderate size, by no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend\r\nKing Tranquo’s.\r\n\r\nIn both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons\r\nbelonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar\r\ngrounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir\r\nClifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir\r\nClifford’s whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a great\r\nchest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony\r\ncavities—spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan—and swing all day upon\r\nhis lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and\r\nshutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of\r\nkeys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep\r\nat the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the\r\necho in the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled\r\nview from his forehead.\r\n\r\nThe skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied\r\nverbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild\r\nwanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving\r\nsuch valuable statistics."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.127Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.127Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}