"shun the horrid gulf, by Scylla fly; 'Tis better six to lose than all to die."
Ulysses continues his voyage; and as his ship enters the ominous strait,
"Struck with despair, with trembling hearts we viewed The yawning dungeon, and the tumbling flood; When, lo! fierce Scylla stooped to seize her prey, Stretched her dire jaws, and swept six men away. Chiefs of renown! loud echoing shrieks arise; I turn, and view them quivering in the skies; They call, and aid, with outstretched arms, implore, In vain they call! those arms are stretched no more. As from some rock that overhangs the flood, The silent fisher casts th' insidious food; With fraudful care he waits the finny prize, And sudden lifts it quivering to the skies; So the foul monster lifts her prey on high, So pant the wretches, struggling in the sky; In the wide dungeon she devours her food, And the flesh trembles while she churns the blood."
One of the sea-fallacies still generally believed, and accepted as true, is that whales take in water by the mouth, and eject it from the spiracle, or blow-hole.
The popular ideas on this subject are still those which existed hundreds of years ago, and which are expressed by Oppian in two passages in his 'Halieutics':
"Uncouth the sight when they in dreadful play Discharge their nostrils and refund a sea,"
"While noisy fin-fish let their fountains fly And spout the curling torrent to the sky."
Eminent zoologists and intelligent observers, who have had full opportunities of obtaining practical knowledge of the habits of these great marine mammals, have forcibly combated and repeatedly contradicted this erroneous idea; but their sensible remarks have been read by few, in comparison with the numbers of those to whom a wrong impression has been conveyed by sensational pictures in which whales are represented _with their heads above the surface_, and throwing up from their nostrils columns of water, like the fountains in Trafalgar Square. One can hardly be surprised that the old writers on Natural History were unacquainted with the real composition of the whale's "spout." Those of them who sought for any original information on marine zoology, obtained it chiefly from uninstructed and superstitious fishermen; but they generally contented themselves with diligent compilation, and thus copied and transmitted the errors of their predecessors, with the addition of some slight embellishments of their own. Accordingly, we find Olaus Magnus[73] describing, as follows, the _Physeter_, or, as his translator, Streater, calls it, the _Whirlpool_. "The _Physeter_ or _Pristis_," he says, "is a kind of whale, two hundred cubits long, and is very cruel. For, to the danger of seamen, he will sometimes raise himself above the sail-yards, and casts such floods of waters above his head, which he had sucked in, that with a cloud of them he will often sink the strongest ships, or expose the mariners to extreme danger. This beast hath also a large round mouth, like a lamprey, whereby he sucks in his meat or water, and by his weight cast upon the fore or hinder deck, he sinks and drowns a ship."