A Bower in the Arsacides — Moby-Dick

Ishmael says it is time to show the sperm whale in his full skeleton, stripped of all flesh. He asks how a mere oarsman can know the whale's insides. He did not learn from lectures on deck. Instead he once dissected a small whale cub that was hoisted aboard to make harpoon sheaths. He used his hatchet and jack-knife to study every bone inside that young whale.

For a full-grown whale he visited King Tranquo on the island of Tranque in the Arsacides. After a storm, a dead whale washed ashore with its head against a coconut tree. The bones were dried and moved into a palm temple. Trophies hung from the ribs. Priests kept a fake smoky flame in the skull. The lower jaw hung over worshippers like the sword of Damocles. Green vines wove through the white bones. Ishmael walks inside and finds nothing but skeleton. When he tries to measure the ribs, the priests shout that measuring their god is their job, then fight each other with yard-sticks over feet and inches.

Ishmael copies the skeleton sizes onto his right arm as a tattoo, because he had no safer place to store the numbers. He mentions other whale skeletons in museums in England and New Hampshire, and Sir Clifford Constable's whale that opens like a chest of drawers for paying visitors. Ishmael also pauses to describe nature as a weaver-god whose loom deafens everyone until they step outside and hear what was hidden in the noise.