But this huge toil is but little greater than that which is being prosecuted at the same time by the others, all of whom are balanced upon the precarious plank of the cutting in stage, suspended far out over the side and springing to every roll of the ship. There is the junk to be divided from the head, a mass weighing eight to ten tons cut diagonally from the lower point of the upper jaw, and there is also the huge oblong mass of the case, or really half the remainder of the head, to be cut through, where a careless lunge of the spade may cause the leakage of all the valuable spermaceti which it holds in a liquid state. In this immense task strength avails little unless allied to skill, and skill is of small use without strength and endurance to keep driving the spade in the right place.
In a small whale, as I have hinted before, these operations are much simplified, because the head can be cut off and hoisted on deck, where the work of severing junk and case is quite easy. But as now the whale was of the largest size and most of the work had to be done upon the huge masses rolling and tumbling in the unquiet sea beneath, all the strength, patience, and endurance possessed by the workers were needed to the very limit. At last the head came off, and a great groan of relief went up from Merritt and C. B., whose arms felt as if they would drop off through sheer weariness. But there was no prospect of rest, the only relief they could hope for was a change in their movements bringing a different set of muscles into play. The blubber hook had long been in position affixed to the eyepiece, and no sooner did the huge mass of the head surge astern than the high clear voice of the captain rose—
“Heave away there cheerily now, I want to see how quick ye can skin this whale.”
He was answered by an incessant clattering of the pawls as the windlass brakes flew up and down, and the first blanket piece of blubber, a foot thick and nine feet wide, rose majestically into the air.
As soon as the blocks of the tackle came together the windlass stopped, while the captain, armed with a formidable boarding-knife like a cutlass blade stuck in a long wooden handle, cut a big circular hole in the centre of the blanket piece, thrust the strap of the waiting tackle through it and secured it by a large wooden toggle, shouting as he slipped it into its place, “Heave on yer whale, my hearties, heave on yer whale: surge on yer piece!”
“Oh what a jargon,” I think I hear some reader say wearily. I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped. It only means that the men at the windlass heave on the second tackle and let the fall of the first slip round the windlass barrel. Then as soon as the second tackle has taken the strain “Vast heaving” is called, while the captain with his boarding-knife cuts through the blanket piece high above the hole he made for the securing of the second tackle and the mass, now disengaged, is lowered into the blubber room.
It sounds like a lengthy process but really is not, for in the present instance the captain’s appeal was answered so well that in twenty-five minutes the whole of that vast carcass was denuded of its blubber and had floated away, the centre of a ravening horde of sharks.