Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised,
indifferent as his God.
For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that
fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what
like abandonment befell myself.
CHAPTER XCIV.
A SQUEEZE OF THE HAND.
That whale of Stubb’s, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the
Pequod’s side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations
previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of
the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.
While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed in
dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and
when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated
ere going to the try-works, of which anon.
It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with
several others, I sat down before a large Constantine’s bath of it, I
found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about
in the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back
into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this
sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener!
such a softener! such a delicious mollifier! After having my hands in
it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it
were, to serpentine and spiralize.
As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter
exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under
indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands
among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost
within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all
their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that
uncontaminated aroma,—literally and truly, like the smell of spring
violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky
meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible
sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit
the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in
allaying the heat of anger: while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely
free from all ill-will, or petulence, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm
till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a
strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly
squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the
gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving
feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually
squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as
much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish
any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come;
let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into
each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and
sperm of kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since
by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all
cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of
attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the
fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the
fire-side, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready
to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I
saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of
spermaceti.
* * * * *
Now, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things
akin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the
try-works.
First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering
part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes.
It is tough with congealed tendons—a wad of muscle—but still contains
some oil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first
cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like
blocks of Berkshire marble.
Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of
the whale’s flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber,
and often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness.
It is a most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As
its name imports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a
bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest
crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite
of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that
once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I
should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might
have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the
venison season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an
unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.
There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in
the course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling
adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation
original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance.
It is an ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the
tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting.
I hold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case,
coalescing.
Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but
sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates
the dark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the
Greenland or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of those
inferior souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.
Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale’s
vocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman’s
nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering
part of Leviathan’s tail: it averages an inch in thickness, and for the
rest, is about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along
the oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless
blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities.
But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at
once to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its
inmates. This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle
for the blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. When
the proper time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment
is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one side,
lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen.
They generally go in pairs,—a pike-and-gaff-man and a spade-man.
The whaling-pike is similar to a frigate’s boarding-weapon of the
same name. The gaff is something like a boat-hook. With his gaff,
the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it
from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the
spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into
the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make it; the
spademan’s feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes
irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one
of his own toes, or one of his assistants’, would you be very much
astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.
CHAPTER XCV.
THE CASSOCK.
Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this
post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the
windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small
curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen
there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous
cistern in the whale’s huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower
jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so
surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,—longer
than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and
jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed,
it is; or, rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as
that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea; and for
worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed the
idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly
set forth in the 15th chapter of the first book of Kings.
Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and
assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners
call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were
a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon
the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark
pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the
pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so
as almost to double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread,
in the rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some
three feet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two
slits for arm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself
bodily into it. The mincer now stands before you invested in the
full canonicals of his calling. Immemorial to all his order, this
investiture alone will adequately protect him, while employed in the
peculiar functions of his office.
That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the
pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse,
planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath
it, into which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt
orator’s desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit;
intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishoprick, what a
lad for a Pope were this mincer![20]
[20] Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from
the mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut
his work into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so
doing the business of boiling out the oil is much accelerated,
and its quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps
improving it in quality.
CHAPTER XCVI.
THE TRY-WORKS.
Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly
distinguished by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of
the most solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the
completed ship. It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were
transported to her planks.
The try-works are planted between the foremast and main-mast, the
most roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar
strength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of
brick and mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height.
The foundation does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly
secured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all
sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased
with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping, battened
hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in
number, and each of several barrels’ capacity. When not in use, they
are kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with soapstone