“Mr. Winsloe, we’ve got a big thing in hand, but the best of weather for it. We’ll take each whale alongside and get the heads off first, lettin’ them all tow astern as we cut them off. Then we’ll put all our vim into gettin’ the carcasses skinned, and if the boys only work as they ought, I think we might get the back of the work broken by eight bells to-night.”
Winsloe only grunted, for he was a man of few words, and, slouching forrard, roared, “Turn to!”
Now it would be quite easy for me to take an entire chapter in the attempt to explain the nature and progress of the gigantic task that was accomplished by those forty men, toiling almost incessantly from noon until daylight the next morning; but as the great business has nothing adventurous or thrilling about it, I fear I could not make it interesting. Only I feel that I would like you to realize the scene. The immense masses of blubber being hove inboard by the full power of the crew at the windlass, the great tackles groaning and the ship canting over under the load, the unwearying thrust and recover of the long-handled spades as the toiling officers and harponeers laboured to disjoint the huge heads or scarph the blubber so that it would strip easily from the carcasses, the fitful weird glare of the cressets of blazing “scrap” (pieces of blubber from which the oil has been boiled disposed about the ship to give light to the toilers), and just outside that tiny circle of human labour the solemn vastness of the darkling ocean, the loneliness of that untraversed sea.
But I should do scant justice to the picture if I failed to note how, within that apparently charmed circle which had the ship for its centre, the deep was alive, luminous and vivid. The ceaseless come and go of the ravenous sea-scavengers, striving with all their wonderful energy to get a share of the great feast that was spread, was in itself a sight to linger in the memory as long as life should last, had the workers but time to look at it. And to complete the uncanny interest of the whole strange scene, there was the uneasy passings and melancholy voices of the sea-birds, flitting whitely through the gloom, impatiently waiting for the day.
Daylight saw the huge task completed, and the ship’s deck from one end to the other blocked with the mighty masses of case and junk and blanket pieces. The blubber-room, as the square of the main-hatch down to the ’tween decks and for about ten feet on either side of it is called, was choked full of blubber, not another slice could be got down, and in consequence all the rest had to be piled on deck. Old whalemen will doubt the possibility of such a feat as the cutting in of five sperm whales in twenty hours until I explain that none of the whales were too large to have the case lifted inboard, and that, of course, makes all the difference; for I have been twenty-four hours engaged in cutting in one whale, and with a smart man in charge too. But then that whale was so huge that many time-wasting things had to be done that were unnecessary in the case I am relating.
As the last case was hove on board and secured, the skipper gave a long sigh of relief and cried—
“Spell ho! all hands. Mr. Winsloe, give the boys three hours’ rest, good, and then we’ll start blubber watches (six hours on and six hours off); and say, you cook-man, just you see to it that the men get the best breakfast that can be scared up in the ship.” And as he turned away towards the stern the oil dripped from his hair, his clothing, and squished out of his sea-boots, for the captains of those ships, if they drove their crews, drove themselves hardest of all, and no man could say that his skipper could only drive, not lead.
Now, impossible as it may seem to us, there was no attempt made to change clothing. Just a perfunctory wipe of hands and face with oakum wads preliminary to a wolfish devouring of food, for all were outrageously hungry. That everything eaten and even the tobacco smoked afterwards was reeking with oil nobody minded, for in truth the product of the sperm whale when absolutely fresh as this was is as bland and pleasant as the purest olive oil: it is only when it gets stale and rancid that its unpleasant taste and odour become manifest.
The short respite worked wonders for the toilers, although those of them who had to resume work at 10 a.m., four bells, thought longingly of the greasy bunks in which the fortunate members of the watch below were recuperating from their heavy labours. But a spirit of emulation was aboard, and there was no cursing or driving; every man therefore did his best to reduce the chaos on deck to something like order. The huge cases were split open one after the other, the spermaceti baled out and passed into tanks below, and as each was scraped dry it was hauled to the waist and pushed through the open gangway into the sea, where, in spite of the vast banquet given them in the carcasses of the whales during the night, there were thousands of gaping candidates for more.
As the fierce sun came out and beat down upon the piles of blubber the oil exuded and filled the decks, for all the scuppers and wash-ports were closed tightly, and there was no time to bale or place to bale the oil into until the fires in the try-works should be started. But by dint of the hardest, most unremitting toil, at midday enough of a clearance had been made to start the fires and the work of boiling down began. And here I must leave the business for a while because, although it has not its parallel in any other work ashore, it is dirty, greasy, smelly; full of sordid discomforts, and difficult indeed to see the romance of except to the privileged few who have strong imaginations.