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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.
总之，从许多方面说来，可惜大鲸的尾巴没有这种抓握力；因为我还听到有另一只象，说是当它在战斗中受伤时，它的鼻子一弯，就把那支戳在身上的枪矛给拔了出来。
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 almost think a great gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath of vapor from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think that that was the smoke from the touch-hole.
第四，趁大鲸一无戒备地在它那自认为安全地带的孤洋中时，你不妨去悄悄地瞧它一瞧，就可以看到它一卸它那伟大的雄姿，象一只躺在火炉旁的小猫似的在大洋里嬉戏。然而，在它嬉戏中，你还是可以看到它的威力。它那平坦的大尾巴倏地向空一耸，然后砰地一声落在水面上，雷鸣似的激荡声，回旋好几英里远，简直教人以为放了大炮。如果你同时再看一看它另一端的喷水孔里所迸射出来的闪亮而雾气重重的圈圈的话，你准会认为那是火门迸射出来的火药烟。
Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukes lies considerably below the level of his back, they are then completely out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime breach— somewhere else to be described—this peaking of the whale's flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature.
第五，大鲸在通常的游姿中，总是先把裂片深埋在它屁股下面，接着就沉在水里，完全看不见了；不过，在它要猛地潜到海底去时，它整个裂片就会连同它的部分身躯（至少有三十英尺）腾空耸起，晃动一会儿，这才向下一潜不见了。除了那种雄壮的鲸跳——这将在另外的地方谈到——大鲸的竖尾也许应该算是一切生物中仅有的最壮丽的景象。
