Gargantua and Pantagruel
crabs, and without brows, stared out of their heads, fixed on bones like
those of our heels; their feet were round like tennis-balls; their arms and
hands turned backwards towards their shoulders; and they walked on their
heads, continually turning round like a ball, topsy-turvy, heels over head.
Yet--as you know that apes esteem their young the handsomest in the world
--Antiphysis extolled her offspring, and strove to prove that their shape
was handsomer and neater than that of the children of Physis, saying that
thus to have spherical heads and feet, and walk in a circular manner,
wheeling round, had something in it of the perfection of the divine power,
which makes all beings eternally turn in that fashion; and that to have our
feet uppermost, and the head below them, was to imitate the Creator of the
universe; the hair being like the roots, and the legs like the branches of
man; for trees are better planted by their roots than they could be by their
branches. By this demonstration she implied that her children were much
more to be praised for being like a standing tree, than those of Physis,
that made a figure of a tree upside down. As for the arms and hands, she
pretended to prove that they were more justly turned towards the shoulders,
because that part of the body ought not to be without defence, while the
forepart is duly fenced with teeth, which a man cannot only use to chew, but
also to defend himself against those things that offend him. Thus, by the
testimony and astipulation of the brute beasts, she drew all the witless
herd and mob of fools into her opinion, and was admired by all brainless and
nonsensical people.
Since that, she begot the hypocritical tribes of eavesdropping dissemblers,
superstitious pope-mongers, and priest-ridden bigots, the frantic
Pistolets, (the demoniacal Calvins, impostors of Geneva,) the scrapers of
benefices, apparitors with the devil in them, and other grinders and
squeezers of livings, herb-stinking hermits, gulligutted dunces of the
cowl, church vermin, false zealots, devourers of the substance of men, and
many more other deformed and ill-favoured monsters, made in spite of
nature.
Chapter 4.XXXIII.
How Pantagruel discovered a monstrous physeter, or whirlpool, near the Wild
Island.
About sunset, coming near the Wild Island, Pantagruel spied afar off a huge
monstrous physeter (a sort of whale, which some call a whirlpool), that
came right upon us, neighing, snorting, raised above the waves higher than
our main-tops, and spouting water all the way into the air before itself,
like a large river falling from a mountain. Pantagruel showed it to the
pilot and to Xenomanes.
By the pilot’s advice the trumpets of the Thalamege were sounded to warn
all the fleet to stand close and look to themselves. This alarm being
given, all the ships, galleons, frigates, brigantines, according to their
naval discipline, placed themselves in the order and figure of an Y
(upsilon), the letter of Pythagoras, as cranes do in their flight, and like
an acute angle, in whose cone and basis the Thalamege placed herself ready
to fight smartly. Friar John with the grenadiers got on the forecastle.
Poor Panurge began to cry and howl worse than ever. Babille-babou, said
he, shrugging up his shoulders, quivering all over with fear, there will be
the devil upon dun. This is a worse business than that t’other day. Let
us fly, let us fly; old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan, described by
the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job. It will swallow us
all, ships and men, shag, rag, and bobtail, like a dose of pills. Alas! it
will make no more of us, and we shall hold no more room in its hellish
jaws, than a sugarplum in an ass’s throat. Look, look, ‘tis upon us; let
us wheel off, whip it away, and get ashore. I believe ‘tis the very
individual sea-monster that was formerly designed to devour Andromeda; we
are all undone. Oh! for some valiant Perseus here now to kill the dog.
I’ll do its business presently, said Pantagruel; fear nothing. Ods-belly,
said Panurge, remove the cause of my fear then. When the devil would you
have a man be afraid but when there is so much cause? If your destiny be
such as Friar John was saying a while ago, replied Pantagruel, you ought to
be afraid of Pyroeis, Eous, Aethon, and Phlegon, the sun’s coach-horses,
that breathe fire at the nostrils; and not of physeters, that spout nothing
but water at the snout and mouth. Their water will not endanger your life;
and that element will rather save and preserve than hurt or endanger you.
Ay, ay, trust to that, and hang me, quoth Panurge; yours is a very pretty
fancy. Ods-fish! did I not give you a sufficient account of the elements’
transmutation, and the blunders that are made of roast for boiled, and
boiled for roast? Alas! here ‘tis; I’ll go hide myself below. We are dead
men, every mother’s son of us. I see upon our main-top that merciless hag
Atropos, with her scissors new ground, ready to cut our threads all at one
snip. Oh! how dreadful and abominable thou art; thou hast drowned a good
many beside us, who never made their brags of it. Did it but spout good,
brisk, dainty, delicious white wine, instead of this damned bitter salt
water, one might better bear with it, and there would be some cause to be
patient; like that English lord, who being doomed to die, and had leave to
choose what kind of death he would, chose to be drowned in a butt of
malmsey. Here it is. Oh, oh! devil! Sathanas! Leviathan! I cannot
abide to look upon thee, thou art so abominably ugly. Go to the bar, go
take the pettifoggers.
Chapter 4.XXXIV.
How the monstrous physeter was slain by Pantagruel.
The physeter, coming between the ships and the galleons, threw water by
whole tuns upon them, as if it had been the cataracts of the Nile in
Ethiopia. On the other side, arrows, darts, gleaves, javelins, spears,
harping-irons, and partizans, flew upon it like hail. Friar John did not
spare himself in it. Panurge was half dead for fear. The artillery roared
and thundered like mad, and seemed to gall it in good earnest, but did but
little good; for the great iron and brass cannon-shot entering its skin
seemed to melt like tiles in the sun.
Pantagruel then, considering the weight and exigency of the matter,
stretched out his arms and showed what he could do. You tell us, and it is
recorded, that Commudus, the Roman emperor, could shoot with a bow so
dexterously that at a good distance he would let fly an arrow through a
child’s fingers and never touch them. You also tell us of an Indian
archer, who lived when Alexander the Great conquered India, and was so
skilful in drawing the bow, that at a considerable distance he would shoot
his arrows through a ring, though they were three cubits long, and their
iron so large and weighty that with them he used to pierce steel cutlasses,
thick shields, steel breastplates, and generally what he did hit, how firm,
resisting, hard, and strong soever it were. You also tell us wonders of
the industry of the ancient Franks, who were preferred to all others in
point of archery; and when they hunted either black or dun beasts, used to
rub the head of their arrows with hellebore, because the flesh of the
venison struck with such an arrow was more tender, dainty, wholesome, and
delicious--paring off, nevertheless, the part that was touched round about.
You also talk of the Parthians, who used to shoot backwards more
dexterously than other nations forwards; and also celebrate the skill of
the Scythians in that art, who sent once to Darius, King of Persia, an
ambassador that made him a present of a bird, a frog, a mouse, and five
arrows, without speaking one word; and being asked what those presents
meant, and if he had commission to say anything, answered that he had not;
which puzzled and gravelled Darius very much, till Gobrias, one of the
seven captains that had killed the magi, explained it, saying to Darius:
By these gifts and offerings the Scythians silently tell you that except
the Persians like birds fly up to heaven, or like mice hide themselves near
the centre of the earth, or like frogs dive to the very bottom of ponds and
lakes, they shall be destroyed by the power and arrows of the Scythians.
The noble Pantagruel was, without comparison, more admirable yet in the art
of shooting and darting; for with his dreadful piles and darts, nearly
resembling the huge beams that support the bridges of Nantes, Saumur,
Bergerac, and at Paris the millers’ and the changers’ bridges, in length,
size, weight, and iron-work, he at a mile’s distance would open an oyster
and never touch the edges; he would snuff a candle without putting it out;
would shoot a magpie in the eye; take off a boot’s under-sole, or a
riding-hood’s lining, without soiling them a bit; turn over every leaf
of Friar John’s breviary, one after another, and not tear one.
With such darts, of which there was good store in the ship, at the first
blow he ran the physeter in at the forehead so furiously that he pierced
both its jaws and tongue; so that from that time to this it no more opened
its guttural trapdoor, nor drew and spouted water. At the second blow he
put out its right eye, and at the third its left; and we had all the
pleasure to see the physeter bearing those three horns in its forehead,
somewhat leaning forwards in an equilateral triangle.
Meanwhile it turned about to and fro, staggering and straying like one
stunned, blinded, and taking his leave of the world. Pantagruel, not
satisfied with this, let fly another dart, which took the monster under the
tail likewise sloping; then with three other on the chine, in a
perpendicular line, divided its flank from the tail to the snout at an
equal distance. Then he larded it with fifty on one side, and after that,
to make even work, he darted as many on its other side; so that the body of
the physeter seemed like the hulk of a galleon with three masts, joined by
a competent dimension of its beams, as if they had been the ribs and
chain-wales of the keel; which was a pleasant sight. The physeter then
giving up the ghost, turned itself upon its back, as all dead fishes do; and
being thus overturned, with the beams and darts upside down in the sea, it
seemed a scolopendra or centipede, as that serpent is described by the
ancient sage Nicander.
Chapter 4.XXXV.
How Pantagruel went on shore in the Wild Island, the ancient abode of the
Chitterlings.
The boat’s crew of the ship Lantern towed the physeter ashore on the
neighbouring shore, which happened to be the Wild Island, to make an
anatomical dissection of its body and save the fat of its kidneys, which,
they said, was very useful and necessary for the cure of a certain
distemper, which they called want of money. As for Pantagruel, he took no
manner of notice of the monster; for he had seen many such, nay, bigger, in
the Gallic ocean. Yet he condescended to land in the Wild Island, to dry
and refresh some of his men (whom the physeter had wetted and bedaubed), at
a small desert seaport towards the south, seated near a fine pleasant
grove, out of which flowed a delicious brook of fresh, clear, and purling
water. Here they pitched their tents and set up their kitchens; nor did
they spare fuel.
Everyone having shifted as they thought fit, Friar John rang the bell, and
the cloth was immediately laid, and supper brought in. Pantagruel eating
cheerfully with his men, much about the second course perceived certain
little sly Chitterlings clambering up a high tree near the pantry, as still
as so many mice. Which made him ask Xenomanes what kind of creatures these
were, taking them for squirrels, weasels, martins, or ermines. They are