Tales of the Chesapeake

by George Alfred Townsend

"'I have suffered this wound for your majesty's sake,' said the whale again; 'for I had been deputed to wait in this latitude for your arrival, and convey you to our sovereign. But though I am now in the third century of my age, I can survive a dozen such prickings, and if I chose could shiver the Crimson Dragon with a blow of my tail, as in 1804 I stove the Essex, and made driftwood of her spars.'

"In an instant I was seated within the mighty maw of this famous monster. His jaw-bones were forty feet in length; the roof of his mouth was fifteen feet high, and formed of a spacious arch of 'balleen,' or whale-bone. His crescent-shaped tail, thirty-five feet from tip to tip, swept the depths twice or thrice; and when we emerged into the air, the blood spouted from his pores, and he threw cataracts of water through his spiracle. I saw the Crimson Dragon some miles away, but there were no traces of her boats. The crews of the launches were fathoms deep in the ocean!

"I passed the cape of Greenland, rounded the base of Mount Hecla, and was escorted to the abode of the king of the cetacea by a multitude of his subjects. A submarine island, forty fathoms from the surface, had been occupied three thousand years by this venerable person. He came out to meet me upon the back of a mighty 'rorqual,' and a body-guard of four hundred picked narwhals swam before him. Fifty white whales surrounded their monarch, and a host of dolphins, grampuses, and porpoises brought up the rear. Banners of dyed seal-skin bore his arms—three gourds, argent, upon a field vert; and with these were carried as trophies the wrecks of ships, including the identical shallop whence he was expelled on the voyage to Tarshish. But, marvellous beyond all, the 'great fish' (falsely so translated, since no cetaceous creature can be denominated a fish) into which he was received still lived, and accompanied him. It was now the eldest of the species, but very sprightly, and burdened with dignities. The Seer-King saluted gravely, and gave me a draught of spirits, distilled from the fronds of a rare sea-tangle. His long tenure in the deep had obliterated much of the similitude to man, but his memory of terrestrial matters was extraordinary. The weeds were wrapped about his head after the manner of a crown, and he carried a sceptre of walrus tusk. He told me that his original three days' experience under the sea had so cooled his blood, that the suns of Nineveh parched him, and he had cried for cooling water. I informed him that Nineveh no longer existed, at which he was gratified beyond measure; for his only knowledge of events happening on the earth had been derived from the wrecks which had sunk into his domain. I found that he was badly informed upon matters of science, and he heard my theories of harmonizing the universes with impatience. In his days, he said, no such ideas were broached, and he was indifferent to the intellectual development of his subjects.

"My visit was brief, for, though the palace of Jonah had a sepulchral grandeur about it—a mighty cavern beneath the waves—yet the glittering stalactites which studded the roof, and the cold columns of ice supporting its halls, nearly froze me, and at length I made ready to depart.

"An escort of 'thrashers,' or grampuses, accompanied me. The Seer-King would have detached a cohort of white whales, but the animosity of my tribes might have provoked combat. I left the cetacea with some foreboding. They were allied in some degree to man; they were capable of some human impressions; their blood was warm like mine; they breathed with lungs; they had double hearts; and nourished kindness for their offspring. But I was now about to be delivered over to the cold, cruel, gluttonous tribes of the fish. The family of sharks received me. They could not be counted for multitude. The terrible requiem of the storm—the cannibal white shark—welcomed me with open jaws; the blue shark flung up his caudal for joy; the fox-shark lashed the sea; the northern shark glared through his purblind orbs; the hammer-head dilated his yellow irides; the purple dog-fish made a low purring huzza; and the spotted eyes of the monk-fish glistened with satisfaction. The hound-shark, the basking-shark, and the port-beagle were not less loyal; and these, the most perfectly organized of my cartilaginous tribes, handed me over to the deep-swimming Norwegian 'sea-rat.' Thus I kept steadily southward, the water growing warmer hour by hour, now riding on the serrated snouts of saw-fishes, now moving in the midst of battalions of sword-fish, now acknowledged by the great pike, now vaulting above the surface on the backs of flying-fish, now clinging to the spines of sturgeons, now passing through illimitable shoals of cod, now borne by the swift sea-salmon, now dazzled by the golden scales of the carp, now passing over miles of flat-fish, now hailed by monster conger-eels, now swimming down files of leering hippocampuses, now received by congregations of staid aldermanic lobsters. The torpedo telegraphed my coming to the tribes before, and at last I reached my abode, on the line of the equator, in mid-Atlantic.

"The magnitude and beauty of my court no mind can realize. A truncated cone of granitic rock, whose base extended to the profoundest depths of the sea—even to the region of perpetual fire—formed with its upper plane a circular lagoon at the surface of the ocean. Geysers or volcanoes of fresh water gurgled up through the centre of this palace, and vast submarine groves, intermixed with meadows, extended for leagues along its sides. My household consisted entirely of silver and golden carp, but my guards were of the loyal and gentle, yet courageous and powerful xiphias (sword-fish). These barred the unlicensed ingress of my subjects, and if the adventurous foot of man should profane my lagoon, I could close its inlet and cover it with floods. The dim aisles of the waters were full of wonderful lights: combinations of colors, unknown above, were here developed in gigantic fuci, around whose boles the scarlet tangle climbed, and parasites of purple and emerald played upon their rinds. Some of these forests pointed upward toward the sun; some grew downward, deriving light and heat from the incandescent gulfs. My state apartments were built of coral, in wondrous architecture, and trumpet-weed clothed their battlements. Some cavernous recesses were lit with constellations of shining zoophytes, and there were floors of pearl, studded with diamonds. I could stroll through marvellous arch-ways, gathering jewels at every step, or wander in my royal meadows, among the wrecks and spoils of hurricanes; or rising through the mellow depths, sit among the palms of the lagoon, watching the white sails of ships or studying the awfulness of the storm.

"For a time I secluded myself, theorizing upon the policy of my government. My dominions were vast and venerable; they comprehended two thirds of the surface of the globe; no deluges had destroyed them, and they had been peopled ages before the coming of man. Life here inhabited forms, vegetable and animal, to which the greatest terrestrials were puny. But the darkness which of old rested on the face of the deep, now shadowed its depths. There was no mind here. These gigantic beings were shapes without souls. How should I reason with creatures who could not feel, whose heads could not know till to-morrow that their members had been severed to-day—some of whom, in a single moment, passed their whole existences, and fulfilled all the functions of eating, drinking, and generating—who were not only incapable of thoughts, affections, and emotions, but who could not see, smell, hear, taste, or touch? But such subjects are among the afflictions of all wise rulers, and I resolved to conclude upon nothing till I had visited every part of my dominions.

"During three years of travel I classified the fishes anew, all previous enumeration being paltry, and made the notes and queries which form the staple of my manuscript. I found fresh-water creatures to which the sheat-fish would be a morsel, and hydras to which the fabled sea-serpent would be a worm. I ascended the rivers with the salmon, and fathomed the motives of the climbing-perch. I heard the narrative of a siluris tossed out of a volcano, and talked with a haddock which produced at a birth more young than there are men upon the globe. I have noted the harlequin-angler, which lived three weeks in Amsterdam, hopping about on his fins like a toad; the sucking-fish which adhered to Marc Antony's galley and held it fast; the horned-fish (fil en dos) which the savages discard from their nets in terror and prayer; and the sprats which rise with vapors into the clouds, and are rained back into the sea. I have collected the traditions of many of these beings, and have translated some of their ballads. There is music under the ocean; but most of the fishes sing with their fins, beating the water to rude measures. Among the traditions of all the tribes is that of a time when the waters were peaceful and the fishes happy, when none were rapacious, when death was unknown, when no storms lashed the ripples into billows, and when beings of the upper air bathed at the surface, and the fishes rendered them homage. But some foul deed of which the finny folk were guiltless brought confusion into the waters; the ocean covered all the globe, corpses sank into the depths and were devoured, nets were let down from above, strange fires were kindled beneath, and whirlpools, water-spouts, storms, and volcanoes began.

"I devoted a fourth year to perfecting my system of organic communication, and made some advance toward developing life in inorganic matter. From this latter attainment it would be but a step to perpetuate life, and I should thus restore immortality to man. But the shark family having threatened to revolt, I left off my investigations for some months, and organized a military force, with which I massacred the malcontents till my subjects swam in blood. Returning victoriously at the head of my legions, a sad incident occurred. A ship was crossing our line of march, and I had an unaccountable curiosity to hear something of terrestrial affairs. Five sawfish, at my bidding, staved in the ship's bottom, and she sank almost instantly. The corpses of the drowned drifted slowly down, and as I passed among them, turning up the faces, I recognized in one the features of my mother!

"After a season of remorse I continued my investigations, but a novel and unexpected discovery deranged my plans, and wrought a change in my destiny.