348 
MOBY DICK; OR 
and the blow is only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the un- 
obstructed 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 bouyancy 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 re- 
ceived in the fishery, that they are accounted mere child’s play. 
Someone 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 ele- 
phant’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 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 com- 
