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.. < chapter lxxxvi 16  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
.. <p 373 >
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
.. <p 374 >
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 whaleboat, 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.
.. <p 375 >
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
.. <p 376 >
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.  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?
.. <p 377 >
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.
.. <p 376n. >
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.
.. <p 377 >