{"id":"01KJNXJV8QQF5NVVQS6DXJVW0K","cid":"bafkreiaa52rp7rpnexq4dmf6fi7g6mko4f5djwzvwg2gc3qvejvguyupm4","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1000947,"char_start":993320,"chunk_index":140,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1907,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"chest 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. But as I was crowded for space, and wished\r\nthe other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then\r\ncomposing—at least, what untattooed parts might remain—I did not\r\ntrouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all\r\nenter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale’s Skeleton.\r\n\r\nIn the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain\r\nstatement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton\r\nwe are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here.\r\n\r\nAccording to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly base\r\nupon Captain Scoresby’s estimate, of seventy tons for the largest sized\r\nGreenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful\r\ncalculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between\r\neighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty\r\nfeet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least\r\nninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would\r\nconsiderably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one\r\nthousand one hundred inhabitants.\r\n\r\nThink you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to\r\nthis leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman’s imagination?\r\n\r\nHaving already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-hole,\r\njaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall now\r\nsimply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his\r\nunobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very large a\r\nproportion of the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far the\r\nmost complicated part; and as nothing is to be repeated concerning it\r\nin this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your mind, or under\r\nyour arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain a complete notion\r\nof the general structure we are about to view.\r\n\r\nIn length, the Sperm Whale’s skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-two\r\nfeet; so that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have\r\nbeen ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one\r\nfifth in length compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two\r\nfeet, his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty\r\nfeet of plain back-bone. Attached to this back-bone, for something less\r\nthan a third of its length, was the mighty circular basket of ribs\r\nwhich once enclosed his vitals.\r\n\r\nTo me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine,\r\nextending far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled\r\nthe hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some\r\ntwenty of her naked bow-ribs are inserted, and the keel is otherwise,\r\nfor the time, but a long, disconnected timber.\r\n\r\nThe ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck, was\r\nnearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each\r\nsuccessively longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one\r\nof the middle ribs, which measured eight feet and some inches. From\r\nthat part, the remaining ribs diminished, till the tenth and last only\r\nspanned five feet and some inches. In general thickness, they all bore\r\na seemly correspondence to their length. The middle ribs were the most\r\narched. In some of the Arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay\r\nfootpath bridges over small streams.\r\n\r\nIn considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the\r\ncircumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of\r\nthe whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. The largest of\r\nthe Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the\r\nfish which, in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the greatest depth of\r\nthe invested body of this particular whale must have been at least\r\nsixteen feet; whereas, the corresponding rib measured but little more\r\nthan eight feet. So that this rib only conveyed half of the true notion\r\nof the living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where I\r\nnow saw but a naked spine, all that had been once wrapped round with\r\ntons of added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for\r\nthe ample fins, I here saw but a few disordered joints; and in place of\r\nthe weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank!\r\n\r\nHow vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try\r\nto comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his\r\ndead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in\r\nthe heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his\r\nangry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully\r\ninvested whale be truly and livingly found out.\r\n\r\nBut the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with a\r\ncrane, to pile its bones high up on end. No speedy enterprise. But now\r\nit’s done, it looks much like Pompey’s Pillar.\r\n\r\nThere are forty and odd vertebræ in all, which in the skeleton are not\r\nlocked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a\r\nGothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a\r\nmiddle one, is in width something less than three feet, and in depth\r\nmore than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the\r\ntail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a white\r\nbilliard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones, but they\r\nhad been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest’s children,\r\nwho had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the\r\nspine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into\r\nsimple child’s play.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.\r\n\r\nFrom his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon\r\nto enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not\r\ncompress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial\r\nfolio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and\r\nthe yards he measures about the waist; only think of the gigantic\r\ninvolutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great cables\r\nand hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of a\r\nline-of-battle-ship.\r\n\r\nSince I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me to\r\napprove myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not\r\noverlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him\r\nout to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described him\r\nin most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now\r\nremains to magnify him in an archæological, fossiliferous, and\r\nantediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the\r\nLeviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed\r\nunwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case\r\nis altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest\r\nwords of the dictionary."},"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"}}