Schools and Schoolmasters — Moby-Dick

After the huge whale herd in the last chapter, Ishmael turns to smaller groups called schools. Each school has twenty to fifty whales. There are two main kinds: female schools with one big bull, and all-male schools of young bulls.

A female school travels with one full-grown bull who guards the rear when danger comes. Ishmael compares him to a rich Ottoman lord with many smaller companions. The females are much smaller than he is. The group moves slowly between feeding grounds like fashionable travelers chasing good weather. If a young male whale gets too close to a female, the bull attacks him fiercely. Whales even duel with their jaws locked like elk with antlers. Fishermen rarely hunt these harem lords because they fight hard but give little oil. The bull fathers babies all over the world but does not raise them. When he grows old, he leaves the harem and swims alone, warning young whales against his old mistakes. Fishermen call this bull the schoolmaster.

Young male schools are larger and wilder. These forty-barrel bulls fight constantly, like rowdy college boys. When they are mostly grown, they split up to find harems of their own. Ishmael ends with an important difference. If you harpoon a young bull, his friends swim away and leave him. If you harpoon a female in a harem school, her companions stay close, circling with worry until they too may be caught. A whale swimming alone is almost always very old, like a hermit who has left the crowd behind.