The Tail — Moby-Dick

Ishmael says other poets praise pretty animals, but he will celebrate something less heavenly: the sperm whale's tail.

The tail is huge. On its top alone it covers at least fifty square feet. It spreads into two broad flat flukes shaped like wings, with beautiful curved edges. A full-grown whale's tail can be more than twenty feet wide.

Inside, the tail has three layers of tough fibers. Long fibers run along the top and bottom. Short fibers cross in the middle, like bricks in an old Roman wall. Muscles from the whole whale's body feed into the tail, so all the animal's strength meets in one powerful end.

Even with all that power, the tail moves with surprising grace. Ishmael says real strength does not ruin beauty. It can create it.

He lists five main ways the whale uses its tail.

First, for swimming. Unlike fish tails, it does not wiggle. It coils and snaps backward to drive the whale forward. Small side fins only steer.

Second, as a weapon against men. Whales fight each other with jaws, but they strike boats with their tails. The blow often comes from the recoil after the flukes curve away. A direct hit in open air can crush ribs.

Third, for sweeping. The whale can gently move its flukes on the surface and feel tiny things, like a sailor's whisker.

Fourth, for lobtailing play. The whale slaps the water hard, making a bang like a cannon.

Fifth, for peaking before a dive. The whale lifts its whole tail and much of its body into the air, then slides down into the deep. Ishmael calls this one of the grandest sights in nature.

Compared to an elephant, the whale's tail is far stronger. Elephant blows are like fan taps next to flukes that can throw whole boats into the air.

Some hunters even think whales in herds make gestures like secret signs. Yet Ishmael ends by admitting he still does not really know the whale. He can study the tail and still not understand the head or the face, because the whale seems to show only his back parts and hide his face forever.