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 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 lies
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.*
*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.
