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Moby Dick (or The Whale)
CHAPTER 86 The Tail.
Herman Melville
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       _ 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 vapour 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.*
       *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. _
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本书目录

Etymology
Abstract
CHAPTER 1 Loomings.
CHAPTER 2 The Carpet-Bag.
CHAPTER 3 The Spouter-Inn.
CHAPTER 4 The Counterpane.
CHAPTER 5 Breakfast
CHAPTER 6 The Street.
CHAPTER 7 The Chapel.
CHAPTER 8 The Pulpit.
CHAPTER 9 The Sermon.
CHAPTER 10 A Bosom Friend.
CHAPTER 11 Nightgown.
CHAPTER 12 Biographical.
CHAPTER 13 Wheelbarrow.
CHAPTER 14 Nantucket.
CHAPTER 15 Chowder.
CHAPTER 16 The Ship.
CHAPTER 17 The Ramadan.
CHAPTER 18 His Mark.
CHAPTER 19 The Prophet.
CHAPTER 20 All Astir.
CHAPTER 21 Going Aboard.
CHAPTER 22 Merry Christmas.
CHAPTER 23 The Lee Shore.
CHAPTER 24 The Advocate.
CHAPTER 25 Postscript.
CHAPTER 26 Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER 27 Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER 28 Ahab.
CHAPTER 29 Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
CHAPTER 30 The Pipe.
CHAPTER 31 Queen Mab.
CHAPTER 32 Cetology.
CHAPTER 33 The Specksynder.
CHAPTER 34 The Cabin-Table.
CHAPTER 35 The Mast-Head.
CHAPTER 36 The Quarter-Deck.
CHAPTER 37 Sunset.
CHAPTER 38 Dusk.
CHAPTER 39 First Night Watch.
CHAPTER 40 Midnight, Forecastle.
CHAPTER 41 Moby Dick.
CHAPTER 42 The Whiteness of The Whale.
CHAPTER 43 Hark!
CHAPTER 44 The Chart.
CHAPTER 45 The Affidavit.
CHAPTER 46 Surmises.
CHAPTER 47 The Mat-Maker.
CHAPTER 48 The First Lowering.
CHAPTER 49 The Hyena.
CHAPTER 50 Ahab's Boat and Crew.
CHAPTER 51 The Spirit-Spout.
CHAPTER 52 The Albatross.
CHAPTER 53 The Gam.
CHAPTER 54 The Town-Ho's Story.
CHAPTER 55 Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
CHAPTER 56 Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes.
CHAPTER 57 Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars.
CHAPTER 58 Brit.
CHAPTER 59 Squid.
CHAPTER 60 The Line.
CHAPTER 61 Stubb Kills a Whale.
CHAPTER 62 The Dart.
CHAPTER 63 The Crotch.
CHAPTER 64 Stubb's Supper.
CHAPTER 65 The Whale as a Dish.
CHAPTER 66 The Shark Massacre.
CHAPTER 67 Cutting In.
CHAPTER 68 The Blanket.
CHAPTER 69 The Funeral.
CHAPTER 70 The Sphynx.
CHAPTER 71 The Jeroboam's Story.
CHAPTER 72 The Monkey-Rope.
CHAPTER 73 Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him.
CHAPTER 74 The Sperm Whale's Head--Contrasted View.
CHAPTER 75 The Right Whale's Head--Contrasted View.
CHAPTER 76 The Battering-Ram.
CHAPTER 77 The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
CHAPTER 78 Cistern and Buckets.
CHAPTER 79 The Prairie.
CHAPTER 80 The Nut.
CHAPTER 81 The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
CHAPTER 82 The Honour and Glory of Whaling.
CHAPTER 83 Jonah Historically Regarded.
CHAPTER 84 Pitchpoling.
CHAPTER 85 The Fountain.
CHAPTER 86 The Tail.
CHAPTER 87 The Grand Armada.
CHAPTER 88 Schools and Schoolmasters.
CHAPTER 89 Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.
CHAPTER 90 Heads or Tails.
CHAPTER 91 The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.
CHAPTER 92 Ambergris.
CHAPTER 93 The Castaway.
CHAPTER 94 A Squeeze of the Hand.
CHAPTER 95 The Cassock.
CHAPTER 96 The Try-Works.
CHAPTER 97 The Lamp.
CHAPTER 98 Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
CHAPTER 99 The Doubloon.
CHAPTER 100 Leg and Arm.
CHAPTER 101 The Decanter.
CHAPTER 102 A Bower in the Arsacides.
CHAPTER 103 Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton.
CHAPTER 104 The Fossil Whale.
CHAPTER 105 Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish?--Will He Perish?
CHAPTER 106 Ahab's Leg.
CHAPTER 107 The Carpenter.
CHAPTER 108 Ahab and the Carpenter.
CHAPTER 109 Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
CHAPTER 110 Queequeg in His Coffin.
CHAPTER 111 The Pacific.
CHAPTER 112 The Blacksmith.
CHAPTER 113 The Forge.
CHAPTER 114 The Gilder.
CHAPTER 115 The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
CHAPTER 116 The Dying Whale.
CHAPTER 117 The Whale Watch.
CHAPTER 118 The Quadrant.
CHAPTER 119 The Candles.
CHAPTER 120 The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
CHAPTER 121 Midnight.--The Forecastle Bulwarks.
CHAPTER 122 Midnight Aloft.--Thunder and Lightning
CHAPTER 123 The Musket.
CHAPTER 124 The Needle.
CHAPTER 125 The Log and Line.
CHAPTER 126 The Life-Buoy.
CHAPTER 127 The Deck.
CHAPTER 128 The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
CHAPTER 129 The Cabin.
CHAPTER 130 The Hat.
CHAPTER 131 The Pequod Meets The Delight.
CHAPTER 132 The Symphony.
CHAPTER 133 The Chase--First Day.
CHAPTER 134 The Chase--Second Day.
CHAPTER 135 The Chase.--Third Day.
Epilogue - "AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE"