CHAPTER 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 :is 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 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 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.
