Moby Dick; Or, The Whale
Page 86
CHAPTER 86
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 atthat point of the trunk where it tapers to about the girthof a man, it comprises upon its upper surface alone, an areaof at least fifty square feet. The compact round body of itsroot 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 sidewaysrecede from each other like wings, leaving a wide vacancy between.In no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitelydefined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes.At its utmost expansion in the full grown whale, the tailwill 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 stratacompose it:--upper, middle, and lower. The fibres in the upperand 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 powerto the tail. To the student of old Roman walls, the middle layerwill furnish a curious parallel to the thin course of tiles alwaysalternating with the stone in those wonderful relics of the antique,and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the great strengthof 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 woofof muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either sidethe loins and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with them,and largely contribute to their might; so that in the tail the confluentmeasureless 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 cripplethe graceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness of easeundulates 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 withthe magic. Take away the tied tendons that all over seem burstingfrom the marble in the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone.As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked corpseof Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the man,that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints evenGod 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 whichhis 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 practicalvirtues of his teachings.
Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that whetherwielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the moodit 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 afin 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 actsin 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 rapidlysprung 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 onlyfights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in hisconflicts 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 madein the unobstructed air, especially if it descend to its mark,the stroke is then simply irresistible. No ribs of man or boatcan withstand it. Your only salvation lies in eluding it;but if it comes sideways through the opposing water, then partlyowing to the light buoyancy of the whale-boat, and the elasticityof its materials, a cracked rib or a dashed plank or two, a sortof 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 offa frock, and the hole is stopped.
Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that inthe whale the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail;for in this respect there is a delicacy in it only equalled bythe daintiness of the elephant's trunk. This delicacy is chieflyevinced in the action of sweeping, when in maidenly gentlenessthe whale with a certain soft slowness moves his immense flukesfrom side to side upon the surface of the sea; and if he feelbut 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 bethinkme 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 prehensilevirtue in his tail; for I have heard of yet another elephant,that when wounded in the fight, curved round his trunk andextracted the dart.
Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied securityof the middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vastcorpulence of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the oceanas 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! thensmiting 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 spiracleat his other extremity, you would think that that was the smokefrom the touch-hole.
Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukeslies considerably below the level of his back, they are then completelyout of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to plungeinto the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of hisbody 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 flukesis perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature.Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodicallysnatching at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majesticSatan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from the flameBaltic of Hell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all whatmood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you;if in that of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the mast-headof my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I once sawa large herd of whales in the east, all heading towards the sun,and for a moment vibrating in concert with peaked flukes. As it seemedto me at the time, such a grand embodiment of adoration of the godswas never beheld, even in Persia, the home of the fire worshippers.As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African elephant, I thentestified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devout of all beings.For according to King Juba, the military elephants of antiquity oftenhailed 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 otherare concerned, should not tend to place those two opposite organs onan 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 tapof a fan, compared with the measureless crush and crash of the spermwhale's ponderous flukes, which in repeated in
stances have one afterthe other hurled entire boats with all their oars and crews into the air,very much as an Indian juggler tosses his balls.*
*Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whaleand the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particularthe elephant stands in much the same respect to the whale thata dog does to the elephant; nevertheless, there are not wantingsome points of curious similitude; among these is the spout.It is well known that the elephant will often draw up water or dustin 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 inabilityto express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though theywould well grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable.In an extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are thesemystic gestures, that I have heard hunters who have declared them akinto Free-Mason signs and symbols; that the whale, indeed, by thesemethods intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there wantingother motions of the whale in his general body, full of strangeness,and unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect himhow 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 hishead? 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 faceshall 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.