physeter

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.

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

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

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

How Pantagruel discovered a monstrous physeter, or whirlpool, near the Wild

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

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.

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

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.

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

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.

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

How Pantagruel discovered a monstrous physeter, or whirlpool, near the Wild

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

How the monstrous physeter was slain by Pantagruel.

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

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.

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

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

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002