CHAPTER 67
Cutting In
It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed!Ex officio professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen.The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble;every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were offeringup ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.
In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderousthings comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green,and which no single man can possibly lift--this vast bunch of grapeswas swayed up to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lowermast-head, the strongest point anywhere above a ship's deck.The end of the hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies,was then conducted to the windlass, and the huge lower blockof the tackles was swung over the whale; to this block the greatblubber hook, weighing some one hundred pounds, was attached.And now suspended in stages over the side, Starbuck and Stubb,the mates, armed with their long spades, began cuttinga hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just abovethe nearest of the two side-fins. This done, a broad,semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted,and the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus,now commence heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass.When instantly, the entire ship careens over on her side; every boltin her starts like the nailheads of an old house in frosty weather;she trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky.More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heaveof the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows;till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a greatswash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale,and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after itthe disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber.Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rinddoes an orange, so is it stripped off from the body preciselyas an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it.For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass continuallykeeps the whale rolling over and over in the water, and asthe blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the linecalled the "scarf," simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuckand Stubb, the mates; and just as fast as it is thus peeled off,and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the time being hoistedhigher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes the main-top;the men at the windlass then cease heaving, and for a momentor two the prodigious blood-dripping mass sways to and froas if let down from the sky, and every one present must takegood heed to dodge it when it swings, else it may box his earsand pitch him headlong overboard.
One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen weaponcalled a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he dexterously slicesout a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass.Into this hole, the end of the second alternating great tackle is thenhooked so as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare forwhat follows. Whereupon, this accomplished swordsman, warning all handsto stand off, once more makes a scientific dash at the mass, and with afew sidelong, desperate, lunging, slicings, severs it completely in twain;so that while the short lower part is still fast, the long upper strip,called a blanket-piece, swings clear, and is all ready for lowering.The heavers forward now resume their song, and while the one tackle ispeeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale, the other is slowlyslackened away, and down goes the first strip through the main hatchwayright beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the blubber-room. Intothis twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the longblanket-piece as if it were a great live mass of plaited serpents.And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and loweringsimultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers singing,the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing, the shipstraining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuagingthe general friction.