“Mr. Baker told me to turn the grindstone,” I answered.
“Aw, you go ’way f’om here,” said Man’el, his grin widening. “I turn for Tony. You could n’t turn well enough. Nice place over there,” he went on, nodding his head sidewise toward the port rail. “Mr. Baker won’t see you.”
He looked up at Tony, who nodded in confirmation, and I found an inconspicuous place against the rail, on the side away from the cutting. Here I stood, and looked out over a gentle sea. The sun was high, and it was pleasantly warm, and the oily smell from the cutting-in was not disagreeable, although I was to leeward and got it all. The sounds of the men pumping at the windlass, and the mates on the cutting-stage, and the noise of an occasionally shouted order, sounded more and more faintly in my ears until they ceased to carry their message to my brain. I heard only the screams of the seabirds wheeling above me, and I saw a glittering sea which danced before my half-closed eyes.
How long I remained in this hypnotic state, between sleeping and waking, I do not know; but I was suddenly aroused by a shout, and turned, to see what seemed to be a blackfish come sliding across the deck, straight at me. It was the small. The explanation is simple, although I did not know it at the time. As they approach the small in unrolling the blanket piece, it comes harder and harder, for the forward end of the carcass has no support except the strip of blubber to which the hook of the cutting-falls is fast, and the raw, red shoulders hang low in the water, so that it is hard to turn them over. When the small is reached, therefore, the carcass is cut clean through, and the forward end sent adrift, accompanied by the shoal of silent sharks and the swarming seabirds. The flukes are then cut off, and the small hoisted bodily in upon deck.
My only thought, if I had a thought, was to get out of the way of this slippery black monster. I jumped away from my place, which seemed to be its destined resting-place, the next jump being as far into the future as I had time to look. The deck was now a perilous place to make your way about on, lumbered up as it was with the jaw and the junk, and the last blanket piece of blubber, which lay pretty well across it, beside the open hatch; and it was covered with oil, as was the gangway and the rail near it. I had no time to consider or to measure chances. I went skipping lightly from floe to floe, like Eliza fleeing from the bloodhounds; and I stepped upon the piece of blubber innocently lying there, meaning to spring across the hatch. It looked firm, and there was nowhere else to step without running into something, and I was on my way and I could not stop. It did not look so very slippery. But it was slippery, and it was not firm; and my foot slipped, and the piece of blubber tipped just enough to shoot me down the open hatch.
As I went down, I caught a glimpse of an astonished brown face, in the comparative darkness of the blubber room, gazing with mouth hanging open, and wide eyes. Then I landed, sitting down, on the other pieces of blubber, which the owner of the brown face had been stowing. I struggled about there in the half darkness for some time before I could get upon my feet. I had no help from the Kanaka Tom. I thought he would have a fit. He fairly shrieked with laughter until he could not stand, to say nothing of helping me. The pieces of blubber slipped about and threw me again and again, and when I finally managed to get up, I seemed to have been swimming in oil. My clothes were soaked with it. I had managed to keep my face and hair out of it, but that was about all.
I heard great shouts of laughter from the deck, but I did not mind, for it was funny. It would have been funnier for them if they could all have seen me wrestling with the blubber. I found myself grinning as soon as I had got over the immediate effects of my struggle. I grinned at the helpless Tom. My clothes were not uncomfortable, but they were hopelessly spoiled for any other use than an oily one.
When I got on deck again—I took good care to be aft of the hatch, and stood under the gallows by the mainmast—they were shifting the case forward, so that it should be near the gangway. A whip was already rigged at the main yardarm, which was braced forward. Every few seconds one of the crew caught sight of me standing there in my oily clothes, and he whooped and shouted with laughter. I was not sensitive about such things, and I grinned in return. The Admiral and Black Man’el were the most affected by the sight of me, the Admiral letting out such a whoop as would have scared away all the whales within ten miles. Even Black Tony, who rarely smiled and never laughed, but was always dignified and as stiff and straight as a poker, could not help smiling.
Black Tony should have been an officer of the high command in some army. He looked the part, lean, straight, and tall, dignified always, and silent and reserved, the only thing out of keeping being his thin gold earrings, and perhaps his color. I think all the other men looked up to him, even the mates, in a way; but he was not even a boatsteerer. Certainly few attempts were made to play upon him any of the rough jokes of sailors. I remember once, when we were on the Western grounds, which are to the westward of the Azores, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, some poor fool did try a practical joke on him.
The case was now at the gangway, and there was no more chance for shouts of merriment on the part of the crew, for they were again at the windlass, swaying up on the cutting-tackles, which had been hooked on to the case. They could do very little with it, however, no matter how hard they pumped. The ship heeled over toward it, and there it stuck, and there it was secured, the upper, open end about on a level with the deck.