“What are they going to do with it, Peter?” I asked, too much interested in the jaw to thank him for catching me. “Will they try it out? Is there oil in it?”
“Oil in what?” said Peter, looking about. “There ’s oil in near everything around here. There ’d have been oil in your clothes and in your hair if I had n’t been here to catch you. Oh, it ’s the jaw you mean. There ’s no oil to speak of in it, but there ’s teeth. When they get eased up on the oil, they ’ll pull the teeth with the help of spades and a tackle. There ’s fine dentists among the crew, I ’m thinking. And maybe they ’ll cut up the jawbone, for it ’s hard and fine, and good for scrimshawing; anything that ’s too big for a tooth to answer for. I ’ll show you, Timmie, when we get some whales of our own.”
“What will you carve, Peter?”
“What will we carve? Anything you want, lad, from an ivory spoon or a jagging-wheel, for your mother to mark pies with, to a model of the Clearchus, exact in every line and rope, and all made of ivory and silk. I brought me some silk thread for just that. Or we might make a swift, to wind off the hanks of wool. One of the boatsteerers, last voyage, made one. It was a strange thing, full of joints, and could be pulled out large or pushed in small to fit, like a lazy tongs. It seemed to work fine, but there was no real beauty in it, just flat links and all; a very good machine, but no piece of work for an artist to turn out. Still, it don’t need to be so plain. We could carve the links and the shaft and the pedestal with a mermaid or two and some dolphins and old Nepchune and his car, and tip off the links with a mermaid’s head at the top and her tail at the bottom. Oh, yes, Timmie, it comes to me now that a real artist might do something even with the reel. We ’ll make one if you like. Or we might make you a cane to use when you get back from this voyage a fine, big man, and go walking about the streets to turn the heads of the girls. Oh, there ’s many a thing we can make, and—hello! Ahoy, there!”
As Peter spoke I turned quickly toward the try-pots, for it was there he was looking. The oil in one of the pots was being dipped out into the copper cooling-tank, and the other pot was almost ready. Something had happened to one of the men as he swung his dipper. The dipper is practically a pail of copper held in an iron ring at the end of an iron shaft about three feet long; and on the end of this shaft is a long sapling handle. I did not know, at the time, what had happened, but I found, afterwards, that the man had hit his elbow and the contents of his dipper had been emptied into the second pot. What I saw was a thin wreath of smoke rising from the pot, with a tremendous bubbling and commotion in it, and instantly the oil burst into flame, which licked the near-by woodwork and rigging, and sent out a great volume of black smoke.
The orgy of devils about the pots became more of an orgy than ever, although the devils no longer laughed. In the weird light and the black smoke which, at times, rolled down and hid the whole thing from me, the devils ran to and fro, and there was a confusion of shoutings for perhaps a minute. Then I heard the mate’s voice bellowing orders, and the other shouting grew less, but in place of it I heard the grunting of men struggling with something heavy, or using every muscle in pulling. The whole thing seemed unreal to me, like a sketch of Doré’s for a scene in Hell—although at that time I had never heard of Doré—and I remember that I leaned back against the bulwarks and laughed to myself. Peter had left me, and I had moved clear of the jaw of the whale, but it never occurred to me to do anything to help. No doubt I should only have been cursed by the mate and by everybody else, for I should not have had the least idea what to do, and I did not even know the names of things. But it is nothing to my credit that I did not offer my blundering help, for I simply did not think of it.
At last the flame died away and there was but little smoke and that of a sickly grayish tinge, as if it were the ghost of what it had hoped to be. I saw the two captains standing together, aft, watching silently, and Peter joined me again, very black and dirty.
“A narrow squeak, Timmie,” he said. “I thought the ship would catch afire in spite of us.”
“What was the matter, Peter?” I asked. “What did it?”
He turned to me with his humorous smile. Peter Bottom always had an air of detachment in his way of looking at things which sometimes concerned him very nearly.