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[Le Blog Personnel de Professeur Arronax] July 30th 1867

From: Harry Hayfield <harryhayfield~at~googlemail.com>
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 15:40:14 -0800 (PST)
To: jvf~at~gilead.org.il

As a professor of natural history, I am often lost in my thoughts. The
most famous occasion was five years ago in Paris as I walked from the
Museum of Natural History in Paris to my apartment. I was so lost in my
thoughts, that it took someone tapping on my shoulder to bring me to
the real world. It was a gendarme looking at me with a stern
expression. I asked him if I could assist but he said nothing and
simply turned me around. Behind me was the biggest traffic jam in
Parisian history. I thanked him for pointing out this and asked what
had caused it.

"You, monsieur!" he replied and explained that I had been walking in
such a manner that every taxi in the city had swerved to avoid me and
had generated that traffic jam. So it should come as no suprise that I
had another experience of that (this time lost in thought about this
thing) a few weeks ago when I bumped into what I thought must have been
a funnel. It wasn't a funnel but was in fact a man.

He looked about forty years of age and was a tall man (I estimated more
than six feet high), strongly built, grave and taciturn. His person
attracted attention, but above all the boldness of his look, which gave
a singular expression to his face. I naturally panicked and apologised
for bumping into him. As soon as I spoke that expression melted and he
shook me by the hand. It turned out that his family came from Quebec
(which is the only French speaking part of the Confederation of Canada)
so in effect we were linguistic brothers. He introduced himself as Ned
Land, the chief harpoonist.

Since then we have become best friends and today I found him sitting on
the poop deck. After a while the conversation turned to this "thing"
and I asked him what he thought about the narwhal suggestion that I had
come up with.

"As a whaler I have followed many a cetacean, harpooned a great number,
and killed several; but, however strong or well-armed they may have
been, neither their tails nor their weapons would have been able even
to scratch the iron plates of a steamer" he replied.

"Well, Ned," I added, "I repeat it with a conviction resting on the
logic of facts. I believe in the existence of a mammal power fully
organised, belonging to the branch of vertebrata, like the whales, the
cachalots, or the dolphins, and furnished with a horn of defence of
great penetrating power"

This piqued Ned's interest, so I explained what I meant. Now, as you
might guess, just as I get lost in my thoughts, when I explain things I
can be a little scientific.

"“Because it requires incalculable strength to keep one’s self in these
strata and resist their pressure. Listen to me. Let us admit that the
pressure of the atmosphere is represented by the weight of a column of
water thirty-two feet high. In reality the column of water would be
shorter, as we are speaking of sea water, the density of which is
greater than that of fresh water. Very well, when you dive, Ned, as
many times 32 feet of water as there are above you, so many times does
your body bear a pressure equal to that of the atmosphere, that is to
say, 15 lb. for each square inch of its surface. It follows, then, that
at 320 feet this pressure equals that of 10 atmospheres, of 100
atmospheres at 3,200 feet, and of 1,000 atmospheres at 32,000 feet,
that is, about 6 miles; which is equivalent to saying that if you could
attain this depth in the ocean, each square three-eighths of an inch of
the surface of your body would bear a pressure of 5,600 lb.". I then
asked him if he knew how much skin he had. He had to admit he didn't
know, so I said that it was more or less 6,500 square inches of skin
and that assuming that average air pressure was about 15 lbs per square
inch, a total of 97,500 lbs of air was pushing down on him without him
realising it!

Then I added that " that at 32 feet beneath the surface of the sea you
would undergo a pressure of 97,500 lb.; at 320 feet, ten times that
pressure; at 3,200 feet, a hundred times that pressure; lastly, at
32,000 feet, a thousand times that pressure would be 97,500,000
lb.—that is to say, that you would be flattened as if you had been
drawn from the plates of a hydraulic machine!".

Ned was staggered at these numbers (which I put down to the way I
expressed them) and there followed a long discussion about how strong
this thing could be to which I added with a slight cheekiness "Stronger
than the harpoonist of the Abraham Lincoln?".

As I went back to my cabin, I suddenly had a thought. Could an animal
really resist a force of 97½ million pounds (the same used by a
hydraulic machine)? If so, it would redefine everything we know about
the seas in this present day.

--
Posted By Harry Hayfield to Le Blog Personnel de Professeur Arronax on
1/03/2010 11:12:00 PM

Received on Mon 04 Jan 2010 - 01:40:25 IST

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