CHAPTER 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.
