or the sperm whale's head embraces
nearly one third of his entire bulk, and completely to suspend such a
burden as that, even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this were as
vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers' scales.

The Pequod's whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head was
hoisted against the ship's side--about half way out of the sea, so that
it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element. And there
with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the
enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm
on that side projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that
blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod's waist like the giant
Holofernes's from the girdle of Judith.

When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went
below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but
now deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow
lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon
the sea.

A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone
from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to
gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he
took Stubb's long spade--still remaining there after the whale's
Decapitation--and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended
mass, placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood
leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so
intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert. "Speak, thou vast
and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a
beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head,
and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast
dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has
moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies
rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this
frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there,
in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast
been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side,
where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou
saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart
to heart the