الفصل الفصل 98 · Stowing Down and Clearing Up.

Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off

descried from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors,

and slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed

alongside and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the

headsman of old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his

great padded surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in

due time, he is condemned to the pots, and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and

Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed through the

fire;—but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of

the description by rehearsing—singing, if I may—the romantic proceeding

of decanting off his oil into the casks and striking them down into the

hold, where once again leviathan returns to his native profundities,

sliding along beneath the surface as before; but, alas! never more to

rise and blow.

While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the

six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling

this way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed

round and headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot

across the slippery deck, like so many land slides, till at last

man-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the hoops, rap,

rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, _ex officio_,

every sailor is a cooper.

At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the

great hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open,

and down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the

hatches are replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet walled up.

In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable

incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream

with freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous

masses of the whale’s head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie

about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted

all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the

entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din

is deafening.

But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in this

self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works,

you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a

most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil

possesses a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the

decks never look so white as just after what they call an affair of

oil. Besides, from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale, a

potent lye is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back

of the whale remains clinging to the side, that lye quickly

exterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and with

buckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness. The soot

is brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous implements which

have been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed and put away. The

great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the try-works, completely

hiding the pots; every cask is out of sight; all tackles are coiled in

unseen nooks; and when by the combined and simultaneous industry of

almost the entire ship’s company, the whole of this conscientious duty

is at last concluded, then the crew themselves proceed to their own

ablutions; shift themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to the

immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from

out the daintiest Holland.

Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and

humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics;

propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not

to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to

such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short

of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and

bring us napkins!

But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent

on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again soil

the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot

somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest

uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through

for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their

wrists with all day rowing on the Line,—they only step to the deck to

carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash,

yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the

combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works;

when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves

to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the

time the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks,

are startled by the cry of “There she blows!” and away they fly to

fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my

friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we

mortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s vast bulk its

small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed

ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean

tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when—_There she

blows!_—the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other

world, and go through young life’s old routine again.

Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two

thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with

thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage—and, foolish as I am, taught

thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!