.. < chapter xcviii 2  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

.. <p 425 >

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

.. <p 426 >

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!

.. <p 426 >