Dolphin

“ The strand he gained and forward he sped like a dolphin, faring with unwetted hooves over the wide waves, and the sea as he came grew smooth, and the sea monsters gambolled around before the feet of Jupiter, and the dolphin rejoiced and rising from the deeps he trembled on the swell of the sea. ”

“ They rose in scattering disorder, in all directions, like a flock of birds charged by a hawk. The pursuing dolphin also leaped into the air, showing his splendid colors and wonderful speed. After the first scattering flight all steady pursuit was useless, and the dolphin had but to pounce about in the broken mob of its weary prey until satisfied with his meal.
We are apt to look out on the great ocean and regard it as but a half-blank part of our globe—a sort of desert, "a waste of water." ”

“ They are too indistinct. To do the fish justice, there is nothing more beautiful than the dolphin when swimming a few feet below the surface, on a bright day. It is the most elegantly formed, and also the quickest fish, in salt water; and the rays of the sun striking upon it, in its rapid and changing motions, reflected from the water, make it look like a stray beam from a rainbow. ”

“ The gambols of the dolphin, the earnest and busy passage of the porpoise, the ponderous sporting of the unwieldy whale, and the screams of the marine birds, have all, like the signs of the ancient soothsayers, their attendant consequences of good or evil. ”

“ Classic Fable and Mediæval Legend have shed a halo of romantic interest around the dolphin which cleaves to it even to the present hour; the rare event of a dolphin being caught in British waters revives with a thrill all the old-world stories and historic associations of this famous fish as if it were a veritable relic of the golden age. The dolphin of fact we have found to be quite a different creature from what he is pictured by the ancients. ”

“ Orion, another myth, and a most exquisite player of the lute, so charmed the Dolphins with his playing, that once being in great trouble and throwing himself into the sea, a Dolphin bore him on his back to the shore.
Some Folks have called us whales. But we are not whales at all, and are of an entirely different family. Yet I am a big fellow all of eight feet long, while some of us are still much longer than that. ”

“ The dolphins were not free from the vicissitudes of life. The sailors amused themselves by spearing them from the forechains, and a fish was often transfixed with jaws extended in the moment of an expected banquet. Then the death of the dolphin was a picture—a beautiful dissolving view. He always made a good end. “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.” The fleeting shades of green, yellow, and gold which shot through him as he lay quivering on the deck, arrayed in all the enchantments of colour, made a fascinating transformation scene. ”

“ Large schools of dolphins followed the sailors in clear weather and amused and entertained them with their arrow-like movements, and with the gracefully waving lines which they left on the waters, while everything else avoided the ship. It was easy for them to imagine that all this was done for their sake, and in consequence of the dependence of the animal upon man. The fancy naturally arose that the dolphin by his movements warned men of approaching storms; and it became regarded as a power and a symbol of the sea and sacred to Neptune. ”

“ Mankind, loving the merry gambols and other endearing characteristics of the dolphin, which 14 has a playful trick of escorting vessels for its own amusement, whose presence signified fair weather, and whose parental attachment to its offspring won their esteem—quite apart from its fabled, perhaps real, love of music or at least of noisy sounds—were pleased to invest it with feelings akin to their own. They were fond of the dolphin; what more natural and becoming than that the dolphin should be fond of them? ”

“ It is fascinating to ponder over tackle and bait and cunning calculated to take this rare denizen of the Gulf Stream.
During half a dozen sojourns at Long Key I had heard of two or three dolphin being caught by lucky anglers who were trolling for anything that would bite. But until 1916 I never saw a dolphin. Certainly I never hoped to take one of these rare and beautiful deep-sea fish. Never would have the luck. But in February I took two, and now I am forbidden the peculiar pleasure of disclaiming my fisherman’s luck.
Dolphin seems a singularly attractive name. ”

“ Pliny says:—“The Dolphin is an animal not only friendly to man, but a lover of music as well; he is charmed by melodious concerts, and more especially by the notes of the water organ. He does not dread man, as though a stranger to him, but comes to meet ships, leaps and bounds to and fro, vies with them in swiftness, and passes them even when in full sail. ”

“ Then, after another long flight, when just about to enter the water, the gaping jaws of a dolphin emerging from the sea gave it pause, and it rose again, returning almost directly upon its former course. This procedure is so common, that it is a marvel it has not been more widely noticed. A flying-fish of mature size can fly a thousand yards. It does not flap its fins as a bird, but they vibrate, like the wings of an insect, with a distinct hum. ”

“ Projecting noses, mouths with upturned corners so they curved in a lasting pleasant grin at the mammals on the shore—the dolphin pair, mammals whose ancestors had chosen the sea, whistled back in such close counterfeit of the girl's signal that they could be an echo of her call. Years earlier their species' intelligence had surprised, almost shocked, men. ”

“ The dolphin of our modern poets and sailors—the swift swimmer that leaps after the flying-fish and frolics in front of the vessel’s prow until he is caught by the glittering tin—is the Coryphæna hippurus, the species famed for its changing tints when taken from the water. ”

“ When they discover their foe it is too late for them to escape, for, although they flee with all their might, now in one direction, then in another, the dolphin gains upon them and snaps them up one by one in his great jaws. In their fright many of them throw themselves clear out of the water with their fins spread, and are carried many feet on the air. ”

“ Yet it is not necessary for us to breathe as Folks do, and we can blow out water in an upward stream from little holes that are over our eyes.
My colors are fine, dark, almost black on my back, gray at the sides, white and shiny as satin underneath.
There are strange things about a Dolphin. One is that when one is about to die, the colors are very beautiful. In growing faint-tinted where once dark, new and brilliant shades flash forth that change and glow in showy tints. In our beak are thirty or forty sharp teeth on each side of the jaw. Our voices are peculiar. ”

“ The Flying-fishes after having escaped for a while by dint of their great velocity, on being again approached by the Dolphin, emerge from the waters, and spreading their broad wing-like fins, sail through the air and disperse in all directions, like a covey of timid Partridges before the rapacious Falcon. Some pursue a direct course, others diverge on either side ”

“ Of the many swift fish in the sea, the dolphin, perhaps, is the most marvellous. Its oft-told beauty, too, is indeed remarkable. A few of these fleet racers were captured, on the voyage, but were found tough and rank; notwithstanding some eulogy on them by other epicures, we threw the mess away. Those hooked by my crew were perhaps the tyrrhena pirates "turned into dolphins" in the days of yore. ”

“ Much has been said about the dying beauties of the dolphin; but how far more beautiful it looks sporting in its parent element with all the brightness of the emerald, and enjoying the life that has been given it! The flesh is firm, and of a very good flavour, although it is a rapacious fish, waging incessant war upon the poor little flying-fish, and devouring them with the greatest avidity. ”

“ The red and blue of the heraldic lion are not less fabulous than the changing colors of the dying dolphin, so dear to poetry. Alas! our unpoetical dolphin, when we have harpooned him and brought him to the deck is only black and white, and all the change that he makes is that the black becomes brown in time, and the white gray. ”

“ And should there be a violin, a guitar, flute, or a cornet—oh, yes, I know them all!—on a passing vessel, we float alongside just far enough under water to keep our bodies out of sight, while we take in the strains in our own peculiar way. For although our ears might be hard to find, we yet absorb or draw in sound very readily.
And now that you know quite a little about the Dolphin family, I will tell you some things that may interest you about my watery home. For home, you know, is wherever one lives, whether it be in the air, on the earth, in the earth, or in the waters under the earth. ”

“ He was about to gaze around him to see if land were in sight, when he noticed a peculiar movement in the spar upon which he sat astride, and in some alarm he saw that it had turned into an enormous dolphin and was carrying him along as swiftly as an arrow. ”

“ In size, beauty, and importance, the “dolphin” easily claims the next place to the albacore. But an unaccountable confusion has gathered around this splendid fish on account of his popular name. The dolphin of mythological sculpture bears no resemblance either to the popularly named dolphin of the seaman and the poets, or the scientifically named dolphin of the natural histories, which is a mammal, and identical with the porpoise. One thing is certain, that no sailor will ever speak of the porpoise as a dolphin, or call Coryphena hippuris anything else. ”

“ By taking wing though for short distances they are able to elude the dolphin, the swiftest of their pursuers, who wondering what has become of them, darts on ahead. Their escape by flying is probably as incredible to the dolphin as the sailors tell us it was to the mother of a sailor who was questioning him as to his experiences at sea. He told her many wonderful things, as, that a wheel of one of Pharaoh’s chariots came up on his anchor; that he saw a whale caught, in whose stomach was found a handkerchief with a Hebrew word on it which a minister on shore declared to be Jonah ”

“ What they all have in common is the friendliness of the dolphin for human beings, their rescue of them when they were thrown into the sea, their playfulness, especially with children, and their interest in almost any sort of sound. ”

“ How quick those sportive fins could play,
How gay, how rich was he!
He moves no more—he’s cold to touch—
He’s dull—dark—dead! The Dolphin’s such,
And such we all must be!
There is a technical fault in the above lines: the grainse, or dolphin-spear, has five barbs; but the harpooner never uses a lance with more than a single point. However, the word was so agreeable to my ear, that I could not find in my heart to leave it out.
DECEMBER 24. (Sunday.) ”

“ But the dolphin is equipped in the most remarkable way of all animals: the dolphin and other similar aquatic animals, including the other cetaceans which resemble it; that is to say, the whale, and all the other creatures that are furnished with a blow-hole. One can hardly allow that such an animal is terrestrial and terrestrial only, or aquatic and aquatic only, if by terrestrial we mean an animal that inhales air, and if by aquatic we mean an animal that takes in water. ”

“ While the Dolphin, like the nautilus, has a veritable existence, and may be duly found amongst the works of nature, it has also, like the nautilus again, served as the foundation for a considerable amount of mythical lore. Thus Pliny, in his so-called Natural History, from which we have already drawn so many curious extracts, writes—“The swiftest of all other living creatures whatsoever, and not of sea-fish only, is the dolphin; quicker than the flying fowl, swifter than the arrow shot out of a bow.” ”

“ Recently the dolphin has become the focus of much scientific interest and investigation which have led to flattering pronouncements about its remarkable intelligence, amiability, and astonishing friendliness towards man. ”

“ The Flying Fish, to avoid its enemies, leaves the water, takes wing, and mounts up into the air. The Dolphin is one of the most constant of these enemies; and its velocity through the liquid element, it is said, surpasses that of every living creature, insomuch that as it darts along, the brilliancy and changeableness of its colours, which cannot be described, appear like the flash of a meteor. A Flying Fish being pursued by a Dolphin, in his eagerness to escape, took too long a flight, and his wings becoming dry, he fell upon a rock, where his death was inevitable. ”

“ Of all these friendly fish, none is better known than the "dolphin," as from long usage sailors persist in calling them, and will doubtless do so until the end of the chapter. For the true dolphin (DELPHINIDAE) is not a fish at all, but a mammal a warm-blooded creature that suckles its young, and in its most familiar form is known to most people as the porpoise. The sailor's "dolphin," on the other hand, is a veritable fish, with vertical tail fin instead of the horizontal one which distinguishes all the whale family, scales and gills. ”

“ The dolphin is remarkable for the love of its young ones; two dolphins were seen supporting a small dead dolphin on their backs, that was about to sink, as if in pity for it, to keep it from being devoured by wild creatures. ”