A few years, however, showed the justice of their censure, and the sad consequences of Brunhilda’s indiscretion. A principle of normal development was then illustrated in our hapless and fallen race with direful results. The gorilla reaches maturity and full growth in a few years, but the Sea-serpent in, I do not know how many. It may be centuries. Science has not yet decided that interesting question. I am of the opinion that the Sea-serpent is still growing; for each time that he is seen he is larger than he was at his previous appearance. Be this as it may, when the gorilla part of the new species which had thus been formed reached maturity, it of course ceased to grow. Not so the sea-serpentine appendage. That followed its normal law of development, and kept on slowly growing.[[2]] At first this excited no apprehensions of trouble, but even a little pride. At last, however, the new species showed very little gorilla and a great deal of Sea-serpent, until at last they came to be a tail with a gorilla. The tails grew, and grew, and grew, until they wound and undulated off into the dim distance; and it seemed at last as if a gorilla might be here; and the end of his tail, if it had an end, vanish through far-stretching perspective into infinite space. The tails, too, following their natural instincts, had an irrepressible tendency toward the water, and while there they were so remote that they were entirely beyond the control of their owners. Lobsters clawed them, sharks snapped at them, and whales took offensive liberties with them. On land the result was an inextricable entanglement. At times the whole community would be tied up in one indistinguishable knot, like the worms in a man’s bait-box. It was proposed to cut off the tails with sharp flints or clam shells; and this was tried; but the tail was so very large and the gorilla so very small in proportion, that it was the gorilla that died, while the tail lived, wriggled down to the shore, and swam off to sea. After two or three experiments this plan was abandoned, as it must needs have been, or our race would have become extinct. Next, it was decided that each individual should gradually reduce the length of his tail by cutting it off joint by joint. But the confusion produced by the inter-twisting was so great that no one was quite sure of his own tail, and while he was sleeping, or eating, or disporting himself in as lively a manner as was possible in this gloomy condition of things, he was liable to feel a joint of his tail cut off by some other individual half a mile away, or perhaps sitting next him; and this might happen two or three times in one day after he had himself amputated his daily joint so great was the confusion. I blush to relate, too, that it destroyed the peace of many families, and threatened to sap the morals of the community. To this condition, my well-haired and tailless quadrumanous hearers, our race was reduced by the wayward fancy and unnatural longing of one female.
[2]. See “The Descent of Man,” etc., chapter viii. on “The Laws of Inheritance,” and “On the Relation of the Period of Development,” etc.
In this deplorable condition of affairs, we were saved by the action of the same great principle of sexual selection to which we owed our degradation. By a female came our fall, and through a female came our salvation. A gorilla maiden of tender years, and whose sea-serpentine appendage was yet in its earliest stages of development, saw the time approaching when she would be courted and perhaps claimed and taken by some two-legged termination of an elongated sea-monster. She shrank from the prospect and shuddered at her impending fate. She was a strong-minded female, and she determined to free herself, and if possible her race, from the dreadful consequences of the indiscretion of her ancestress. Like that ancestress, she shunned the opposite sex, withdrew from society, and gave herself up to solitary wanderings. The problem which she had undertaken to solve was difficult; for then not only gorillas, but all living things had tails. But when was female ingenuity and perseverance ever baffled in regard to marriage! In that matter, we of the stronger sex are mere puppets in the female hands. We often think we have our own way, but it is chiefly by allowing us to think so that our weaker charmers have theirs. Chance aided her as chance so often does those who wait and watch with determined purpose.
One day, as she sat by the borders of a large lagoon, a huge pair of nostrils appeared on the surface of the waters. They wheezed and snorted for a few moments; and then an enormous head came forth, garnished with little ears and huge, stony teeth. The head was followed by a still more enormous body; but, oh joy! oh delight, and prospect full of hope! a body to which there was appended the smallest conceivable of tails; in fact, a tail which to her tail-wearied eyes was of inconceivable smallness. It was a hippopotamus. In her turn she was charmed, was won upon the instant. What happiness might be hoped for in a life with a male creature having so gigantic a body and such an infinitesimally little tail! What terminal transformation, what caudal beauty, might not be looked for in the progeny of such a father! Her resolution was taken on the instant. That hippopotamus should marry her. But the accomplishment of her design proved to be far from easy. The hippopotamus came up out of the water, and she supposed that he would run directly to her. To her surprise, he took no notice of her, but splashed along the sedgy margin of the great pool, thrusting his huge snout into the mud and stirring up the bottom until he and the water were alike befouled. She threw herself in his way and trod the shore with dainty, mincing steps, her tail undulating after her in graceful folds. To her disgust, he seemed unconscious of her presence. He lifted his head, indeed, and gave her a lazy look of indifference, but turned immediately again to his loafing through the mud and water. The hippopotamus is not a lively animal, not of an inquiring mind, almost without curiosity, and, I am grieved to say, utterly without sentiment. What was to be done? She could not seize upon him and marry him out of hand; or, if she could have done so, she would have been no nearer her end. If she had been able to seize that vast, enchanting, and exquisitely almost-tailless body, and carry it off with her to her bower, of what use to her would have been the indifferent mass of flesh? For strong minded as a female may be, and even strong bodied, the unalterable decrees of nature have placed a limit to the efficiency of her will, although not to that of her wiles. Our forecasting and self-sacrificing ancestress might perhaps have stood guard over her male favorite, keeping him well fed and contented within her solitary seraglio; but she would have been thereby no nearer to her hopes of dandling in her arms a new-born and almost tailless progeny.
She grasped the situation at a glance, and mastered it after a moment’s reflection. With the readiness of her sex in such matters, she instantly formed her resolution. Her female instinct taught her that, although a hippopotamus might be without curiosity, without politeness, and even without a disposition to gallantry, he could not be male and yet without sexual vanity. As he would not fall in love with her, she decided to make him believe that she was enamored of him; and, being female, she also determined that, although she set out with the intention of captivating him and yielding to him, she would make him pay well for his indifference. She retreated to her former position, and sitting down on the bank, remained there looking at her victim until he waded into deep water and sank out of sight.
The next day, when he came out upon his haunt, she was there again, and he could not but see that she watched him closely; and when, after stirring up the mud and treading down the sedges (a proceeding which she seemed to regard with the liveliest interest), he walked down into the depths, as he was about disappearing he turned his head, and his last glimpse of the upper world showed him the young lady gorilla gazing pensively on his vanishing form. When she saw him turn his head she smiled within herself; for she saw that she had put a hook into his nostrils. Again and again he found her there, always gazing quietly at him; and each day he lingered longer at his amphibious disporting.