Chapter XCVIII: 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 ley is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness
from the back of the whale remains clinging to the side, that ley
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 hangings 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 the 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!