Love with the Whale being subject to difficult condition requires a profoundly peaceful place. Like a noble elephant, who fears profane eyes, the Whales love only the desert. Their meeting place for pairing is towards the poles, in the solitary bays of Greenland, among the fogs of Behring, and, also, no doubt, in the warm sea which is known to exist close to the pole itself. A solitude they must have to mate in, be it arctic or antarctic.
Will that warm sea be found again? It is only to be reached by traversing the horrid defiles which open, close, and change, with every succeeding year, as though to prevent the return. The Whale, it is believed, pass under the ice from one sea to the other; a bold and perilous journey by that dark road. Compelled to rise to breathe every quarter of an hour, though they have reserves of air which will last them a little longer, they are much endangered as they pass through that enormous crust with only here and there a breathing hole. If one of these cannot be reached in due time, the ice is so thick and solid every where else, that no strength of the Whale could break through it; and he would be as helplessly drowned as Leander in the Hellespont. But the Whales know nothing about the fate of Leander; so they boldly venture, and for the most part pass safely.
The solitude is great, it is a strange scene of death and silence for this festival of ardent and passionate life. A white Bear, a Seal, or, perhaps, a blue Fox, respectful and prudent, looks on from a distance. Fantastically brilliant chandeliers and mirrors are not wanting. Bluish crystals, huge and dazzling peaks of ice, and masses of virgin snow, are all around.
What renders this Elephantine Hymen the more interesting, is, that it is one of express consent. They have not the tyrannous weapons of the Shark by which he subdues his female, for on the contrary their slippery skins separate them. In their struggle to overcome this desperate obstacle to their happiness, one might suppose them to be fighting. The whale-men assert that they have seen this strange spectacle. The couples in their burning transports rear themselves upright like two vast towers, and endeavor to embrace with their short arms. They fall down again with an immense crash; and Bear and Man alike retreat, astounded by the deafening sobs of the vast creatures.
The solution is unknown; those explanations, which have been given, are simply absurd. What is certain is, that, whether in the act of love or of suckling, or of defence, the unfortunate Whale suffers under the double oppression of its weight and its difficulty of breathing. She can only breathe with her head above water; if she remain below she will be choked. Is the Whale, therefore, a terrestrial animal? Not so. If by chance she be stranded on the coast, the enormous weight of her flesh and blubber overwhelms her respiring organs and she is strangled.
Placed wholly in the only element in which she can respire, she is asphyxiated just as surely as if kept beyond a certain space of time wholly beneath the water.
Let us speak plainly. This vast mammiferous giant is an incomplete creature, the first poetic offspring of creative power, which first contemplates the sublime and then reverts to the possible and the durable. The admirable animal was well provided as to size, strength, warm blood, sweet milk, and good disposition. It needed nothing but the means of living. It was made without respect to the general proportions of this globe, without respect to the imperative law of weight. In spite of his enormous bones, beneath, his gigantic sides were not strong enough to keep his chest sufficiently expanded and free. Escaping from his enemy, the water, he found another enemy in the land, and his mighty lungs were overwhelmed, and collapsed. His magnificent blowing apertures throwing up columns of water thirty feet into the air, are, in themselves, proofs of an organization infantine and rude. In throwing up that column towards the sky the panting blower seems to say, "Oh, nature, why hast thou made me a serf?"
The life of this creature was a problem, and it seemed that this splendid but imperfect first draft of the vast and the warm-blooded could not endure. Their furtive and difficult love, their suckling amidst the roar and the rush of the tempest, in the hard choice between shipwreck and strangling; the two great acts of their life rendered almost impossible, and performed only by mightiest effort and most heroic will;—what conditions of existence are these!
The mother has never more than one little one, and that is much for her to achieve. Both she and it have three great annoyances, the difficulty of breasting the waves, the suckling, and the fatal necessity of rising to the surface to breathe. The education of the young one is a real combat. Tempest-tossed and sorely beaten by the waves, the young one sucks, as it were, by stealth, when the mother can throw herself on her side. Here the mother is admirable. She knows that the young one in endeavoring to draw the teat will be forced to leave its hold; and, therefore, seizing the favorable moment, she, as from a piston, discharges a tun of milk into the gaping and craving mouth.
The male seldom quits the female. Their embarrassment is great when the eager and cruel fishers attack them in the person of their young one. The whale-men harpoon the young one, well knowing that the parents will follow it. And, in fact, they do make almost incredible efforts to save it and carry it off; they rise to the surface and expose themselves to the utmost danger. Even when it is dead, they still defend it; though so well able to dive and save themselves, they remain upon the water in full peril to follow the floating body of their little one.