Chương Chương 95 · 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 archbishopric, what a

lad for a Pope were this mincer!*

*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.