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.
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