48 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



from ancient neolithic prototypes. They had extremely high prows 

 which, if the representations on coins, vases, and wall paintings are 

 to be believed, always bore pennants in the form of a fish or dolphin. 

 These craft were long and slim with little freeboard, and rose to a 

 graceful transom aft that was sometimes tapered to imitate a fish's 

 tail. They were propelled by a long bank of oars but sail was used 

 from the earliest times, and before 2000 B.C. one or even two extra 

 masts had been added. These sails were, technically speaking, 

 "squaresails," but the Cretans had a clever way of reefing them 

 diagonally so that they could be very close hauled; thus their fleets 

 could probably sail several points closer into the wind than might 

 be supposed. Had these people lived on an archipelago by an open 

 ocean rather than in a virtually landlocked sea, the course of history 

 might indeed have been very different, as we may gather from con- 

 sideration of the accomplishments of the Greeks, who fell heir to 

 so much of their culture, including their art of shipbuilding, and 

 who, when the opportunity came, themselves performed the most 

 extraordinary feats of seamanship. It is, moreover, to these people, 

 the Greeks, that we must now turn, for upon our particular topic, as 

 upon almost any other that one might wish to choose, they had so 

 very much that was worthwhile to say. But first a word about the 

 Lamb of the Sea. 



The dolphin is a frolicsome little whale which, in its boisterous 

 and apparently uninhibited ways, seems to have delighted men's 

 hearts since the earHest times. Nothing could be less warranted than 

 the silly habit we have unconsciously adopted of attributing our 

 own emotions to animals, for we have not a single iota of evidence 

 that they appreciate any of our feelings or that any of their be- 

 havior is prompted by the same stimuli that activate us. We assume, 

 for instance, that an animal defends its young because of what we 

 choose to call parental love, though we do not know precisely what 

 that emotion is, nor why it should be; we believe that the robin 

 perched atop the dogwood sings out of sheer exuberance, but it may 

 just as well do so as a warning to other robins to keep off its beat 

 or merely because it is suffering from some infestation of intestinal 

 parasites. Nevertheless, there are instances of animal behavior that 

 appear to be quite inexpHcable unless we assume that animals some- 

 times experience sensations such as we ourselves feel. The ancients of 



