Chapter LXVI: THE SHARK MASSACRE
When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and
weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a
general thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business
of cutting him in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one;
is not very soon completed; and requires all hands to set about
it. Therefore, the common usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm
a'lee; and then send every one below to his hammock till daylight,
with the reservation that, until that time, anchor-watches shall be
kept; that is, two and two for an hour, each couple, the crew in
rotation shall mount the deck to see that all goes well. But
sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will not
answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather round
the moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours, say, on a
stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning. In
most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so
largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably
diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades,
a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to
tickle them into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the
present case with the Pequod's sharks; though, to be sure, any man
unaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her side that night,
would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and
those sharks the maggots in it. nevertheless, upon stubb setting the
anchor-watch after his supper was concluded; and when, accordingly,
Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement was
created among the sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting
stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast
long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting
their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant murdering of the
sharks, by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly
their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and
struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and
this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the
foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other's
disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their
own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the
same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this
all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these
creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk
in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the
individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake
of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off,
when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw. Queequeg
no care what god made him shark, said the savage, agonizingly lifting
his hand up and down; wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god
wat made shark must be one dam Ingin. The whaling-spade used for
cutting-in is made of the very best steel; is about the bigness of a
man's spread hand; and in general shape, corresponds to the garden
implement after which it is named; only its sides are perfectly flat,
and its upper end considerably narrower than the lower. This weapon
is always kept as sharp as possible; and when being used is
occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a stiff pole,
from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle.