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In a word , the whale was seized and sold , and his Grace the Duke of Wellington received the money . Thinking that viewed in some particular lights , the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be deemed , under the circumstances , a rather hard one , an honest clergyman of the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace , begging him to take the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration . To which my Lord Duke in substance replied ( both letters were published ) that he had already done so , and received the money , and would be obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he ( the reverend gentleman ) would decline meddling with other people’s business . Is this the still militant old man , standing at the corners of the three kingdoms , on all hands coercing alms of beggars ? It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke to the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign . We must needs inquire then on what principle the Sovereign is originally invested with that right . The law itself has already been set forth . But Plowdon gives us the reason for it . Says Plowdon , the whale so caught belongs to the King and Queen , “ because of its superior excellence . ” And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument in such matters . But why should the King have the head , and the Queen the tail ? A reason for that , ye lawyers ! In his treatise on “ Queen - Gold , ” or Queen - pinmoney , an old King’s Bench author , one William Prynne , thus discourseth : “ Ye tail is ye Queen’s , that ye Queen’s wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone . ” Now this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies ’ bodices . But this same bone is not in the tail ; it is in the head , which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne . But is the Queen a mermaid , to be presented with a tail ? An allegorical meaning may lurk here . There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers — the whale and the sturgeon ; both royal property under certain limitations , and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown’s ordinary revenue . I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter ; but by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same way as the whale , the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that fish , which , symbolically regarded , may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality . And thus there seems a reason in all things , even in law . CHAPTER 91 . The Pequod Meets The Rose - Bud . “ In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan , insufferable fetor denying not inquiry . ” Sir T . Browne , V . E . It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted , and when we were slowly sailing over a sleepy , vapory , mid - day sea , that the many noses on the Pequod’s deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the three pairs of eyes aloft . A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was smelt in the sea . “ I will bet something now , ” said Stubb , “ that somewhere hereabouts are some of those drugged whales we tickled the other day . I thought they would keel up before long . ”
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