The Blanket — Moby-Dick

Ishmael stops to think about a tricky question: what is the skin of a whale, and where is it? He has argued about this with experienced whalemen at sea and with scientists on land. He still holds his own view, but he admits it is only an opinion.

You already know what blubber is. It feels like firm, close-grained beef, but tougher and more elastic. It can be eight to fifteen inches thick. Ishmael says this thick blubber may really be the whale's skin, because you cannot peel off any other heavy outer layer.

There is also a very thin, clear film on top, like the thinnest isinglass. Ishmael calls this the skin of the skin. It is soft and flexible like satin. He keeps dried bits of it as bookmarks in his whale books. Sometimes he lays them on the page and imagines they magnify the words. He jokes that he is reading about whales through their own spectacles.

A large sperm whale's blubber can yield about one hundred barrels of oil. That is ten tons of oil from just three quarters of the outer coat. That gives you some idea of how huge the living whale is.

On a living whale, the skin shows many straight crossed lines, like fine Italian engravings. Ishmael compares some marks to hieroglyphics on pyramid walls or Indian carvings on rocks along the Mississippi. He cannot read them. The whale stays a mystery. Big male whales also show rough random scratches on their sides, probably from fights with other whales.

The blubber strips peeled during cutting-in are called blanket-pieces for a good reason. The whale is wrapped in blubber like a blanket, a bed cover, or a poncho pulled over his head. This thick fat keeps the warm-blooded whale comfortable in every sea and season. Without it, a Greenland whale would freeze in the icy North. Sailors who fall overboard there can freeze solid in the ice. Yet a polar whale's blood is warmer than a man's blood in a hot summer.

Ishmael says we should admire the whale's strong life, thick walls, and roomy inside. He tells people to stay warm among ice. Live in the world without being swallowed by it. Keep your own steady temperature at the equator and at the North Pole, like the great dome of St. Peter's or the great whale.

Then he admits how hard it is to teach such fine lessons. Few buildings are built like St. Peter's dome. Few creatures are as vast as the whale.