Moby Dick

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.