THE TAIL.
Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope,
and the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less celestial,
I celebrate a tail.
Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale’s tail to begin at that point
of the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it comprises
upon its upper surface alone, an area of at least fifty square feet.
The compact round body of its root expands into two broad, firm, flat
palms or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less than an inch in
thickness. At the crotch or junction, these flukes slightly overlap,
then sideways recede from each other like wings, leaving a wide vacancy
between. In no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely
defined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes. At its utmost
expansion in the full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed
twenty feet across.
The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut
into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:—upper,
middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long
and horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and running
crosswise between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much as
anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the student of old Roman
walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to the thin
course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those wonderful
relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the
great strength of the masonry.
But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough,
the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of
muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side the loins
and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and
largely contribute to their might; so that in the tail the confluent
measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point.
Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do it.
Nor does this—its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the graceful
flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates through
a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive their
most appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs beauty
or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly
beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied
tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved
Hercules, and its charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted
the linen sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed
with the massive chest of the man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal
arch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in human form, mark what
robustness is there. And whatever they may reveal of the divine love
in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in
which his idea has been most successfully embodied; these pictures, so
destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but
the mere negative, feminine one of submission and endurance, which on
all hands it is conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his
teachings.
Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that whether
wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the mood it
be in, its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace. Therein
no fairy’s arm can transcend it.
Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin for
progression; Second, when used as a mace in battle; Third, in sweeping;
Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes.
First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan’s tail acts in
a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never
wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the
whale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled
forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is
this which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster
when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve to steer by.
Second: It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only
fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in
his conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail.
In striking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from it,
and the blow is only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the
unobstructed air, especially if it descend to its mark, the stroke
is then simply irresistible. No ribs of man or boat can withstand
it. Your only salvation lies in eluding it; but if it comes sideways
through the opposing water, then partly owing to the light buoyancy of
the whale-boat, and the elasticity of its materials, a cracked rib or
a dashed plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is generally the
most serious result. These submerged side blows are so often received
in the fishery, that they are accounted mere child’s play. Some one
strips off a frock, and the hole is stopped.
Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that in the whale
the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail; for in this respect
there is a delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of the
elephant’s trunk. This delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action of
sweeping, when in maidenly gentleness the whale with a certain soft
slowness moves his immense flukes from side to side upon the surface
of the sea; and if he feel but a sailor’s whisker, woe to that sailor,
whiskers and all. What tenderness there is in that preliminary touch!
Had this tail any prehensile power, I should straightway bethink me of
Darmonodes’ elephant that so frequented the flower-market, and with
low salutations presented nosegays to damsels, and then caressed their
zones. On more accounts than one, a pity it is that the whale does not
possess this prehensile virtue in his tail; for I have heard of yet
another elephant, that when wounded in the fight, curved round his
trunk and extracted the dart.
Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the
middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence
of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were
a hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The broad palms of
his tail are flirted high into the air; then smiting the surface, the
thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would almost think a
great gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath of
vapor from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think that
that was the smoke from the touch-hole.
Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukes
lie considerably below the level of his back, they are then completely
out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to plunge into
the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are
tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they
downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime _breach_—somewhere
else to be described—this peaking of the whale’s flukes is perhaps the
grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless
profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the
highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting
forth his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But
in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in
the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the
archangels. Standing at the mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that
crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in the east,
all heading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert
with peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand
embodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia,
the home of the fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of
the African elephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing him
the most devout of all beings. For according to King Juba, the military
elephants of antiquity often hailed the morning with their trunks
uplifted in the profoundest silence.
The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the
elephant, so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the
trunk of the other are concerned, should not tend to place those two
opposite organs on an equality, much less the creatures to which they
respectively belong. For as the mightiest elephant is but a terrier
to Leviathan, so, compared with Leviathan’s tail, his trunk is but
the stalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the elephant’s trunk
were as the playful tap of a fan, compared with the measureless crush
and crash of the sperm whale’s ponderous flukes, which in repeated
instances have one after the other hurled entire boats with all their
oars and crews into the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses his
balls.[18]
[18] Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the
whale and the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that
particular the elephant stands in much the same respect to the
whale that a dog does to the elephant; nevertheless, there are
not wanting some points of curious similitude; among these is
the spout. It is well known that the elephant will often draw
up water or dust in his trunk, and then elevating it, jet it
forth in a stream.
The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my
inability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which,
though they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly
inexplicable. In an extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are
these mystic gestures, that I have heard hunters who have declared them
akin to Free-Mason signs and symbols; that the whale, indeed, by these
methods intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there wanting
other motions of the whale in his general body, full of strangeness,
and unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect him how I
may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if
I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much
more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my
back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen.
But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will
about his face, I say again he has no face.