Now, mark.  Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is—­ by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect.  So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this expansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that though the Sperm Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your eye-brow.  For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth.  But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then?  What befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess’s veil at Lais?

CHAPTER 77

The Great Heidelburgh Tun

Now comes the Baling of the Case.  But to comprehend it aright, you must know something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated upon.

Regarding the Sperm Whale’s head as a solid oblong, you may, on an inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins,* whereof the lower is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale.  At the middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you have two almost equal parts, which before were naturally divided by an internal wall of a thick tendinous substance.

Quoin is not a Euclidean term.  It belongs to the pure nautical mathematics.  I know not that it has been defined before.  A quoin is a solid which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the steep inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of both sides.

The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of oil, formed by the crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole extent.  The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as the great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale.  And as that famous great tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale’s vast plaited forehead forms innumerable strange devices for the emblematical adornment of his wondrous tun.  Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so the tun of the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily vintages; namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in its absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state.  Nor is this precious substance found unalloyed