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.
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