The case-bucket was then made fast to the line running through the block at the yardarm. The case-bucket looks not unlike an old-fashioned fire-bucket with a bulging bottom, except that old fire-buckets were made of leather, and the case-bucket was of wood, bound about with as many hoops as the old oaken bucket. Wright took his place at the gangway, with a wooden pole in his hands nearly twenty feet long. With this pole he pushed the bucket down, and a bucketful of the mushy contents of the case, consisting of oil and shreds of half-solidified spermaceti, plopped into it. It was then drawn up by men on the other end of the line, and emptied into a butt. As many men as could get at the open end of the well of oil were bailing with anything they could lay their hands to, the long-handled copper dippers for dipping oil out of the try-pots, buckets, tin pails without long handles. When the level of oil was lowered, the dippers without long handles became useless, of course, but the copper dippers could be used for some time. When these came up nearly empty the case-bucket worked alone.
At last the long pole in Wright’s hands had been pushed down for nearly its whole length, to the bottom of the well and the case-bucket would bring up no more oil. There was still some at the bottom of the well, however, and Black Man’el, stripped to a ragged old pair of overalls, went down with the bucket. He disappeared in the black cavern. We could see nothing of him, but the bucket made more than one trip before it brought him up again. He was a sight to see, dripping oil everywhere, his tightly curling hair full of it and of soft, silky shreds of spermaceti. I laughed at him, saying that it was my turn to laugh; but he only showed all his white teeth, replying that he liked it, and that the oil kept him warm and “soopled” him, and recommending it to me. I could understand that it might be pleasant to bathe in oil, in case-oil, for it had an agreeable smell, faintly like that of milk as it foams in the buckets; but I could not have stood getting my hair full of it.
BAILING CASE
As Man’el came up from his oil bath, I heard laughter behind me, and other sounds of merriment and gaiety, and I turned to see the cause. There was the small, from which the blubber had been stripped, lying raw and ghastly. Some half-dozen men were gathered behind it, on the side away from the gangway, and as I looked, they began to push. It was like a game of push-ball, with the raw, red small of a whale for the ball; too heavy to be much like the real push-ball, of which, of course, I had never heard at that time. Nobody had heard of it in 1872. The ship was rolling gently, and while they had to push uphill they made little or no progress, but when she rolled to starboard, the small got to going pretty fast. The deck was slippery, and each man was pushing as hard as he could for his chuckling, hoping, I supposed, to swing it around so that it would not go out of the gangway, for which it was aimed.
In that purpose they were successful. The small struck hard against one of the stanchions at the corner of the opening, swung around, and as the ship rolled back, it started for the port rail, knocking a man down. Then the laughter bubbled forth, led by the blacks and the Kanakas. I had some fear that the sliding small might break out the rail on the port side; but the jaw was there, and the men collected strength enough to stop the slide, although it carried very nearly across the deck. The discipline was not strict, for it does no harm to have a laughing crew; but the pushing rapidly developed into horse-play. Then Mr. Brown stopped it with a curt word, and the men fell to very industriously, but their faces were merry still, and gushes of laughter bubbled out now and then. At the next roll of the ship, the small shot from the gangway as from a catapult, and into the water nearly a couple of fathoms from the side with a tremendous splash, which wet the men at the gangway.
Of course it had to be Mr. Brown who stopped that horse-play, and I felt an admiration for his way of doing it, with two or three words, although I did not hear what he said. Mr. Baker would have stopped it sooner and more violently. I think the men were all afraid of Mr. Baker, which was, no doubt, the feeling which he wished to inspire. As for Mr. Wallet, he could not have done it in a thousand years, and it would never have occurred to him to try; but Mr. Brown stopped it at just the right point, and left the men feeling gay and high-spirited. The whole thing, while unimportant in itself, showed the feeling of the men toward our third mate, and his way of dealing with them.
CHAPTER X
The cutting-in was over by the middle of the afternoon, for that first whale of ours was not very large. If our windlass had been as powerful as modern windlasses, we should have been able to get the case—or even the whole head—bodily on deck, and to get at the oil within it more quickly and completely. The holds of the cutting-falls had been cut away, and the empty case had drifted astern, sinking slowly as it went; the junk had been emptied of its oil, the pure, sweet oil following the spades at every cut; and men were already busy with squeezing out the shreds of spermaceti from the case-matter, two men to a tub. These men seemed to be in no hurry, and to find their task pleasant. I was naturally curious, as a boy should be, and I plunged my hand into a tub of it. I found it to be an exceedingly pleasant unguent, and the half-solidified spermaceti infinitely soothing to hands that were cut and scraped, bruised and chapped. I understood—or I thought I understood—the leisurely way in which the men were working, although this work cannot be done in a hurry and done well. If the spermaceti is not taken out pretty completely, it chars in the try-pots, and darkens the oil, which lessens its value. Head oil is the lightest in color, and the most valuable, and it is always kept separate.
Our mainyards were now aback, the mainsail furled, the topsails reefed, and the ship made very little way, rolling slowly on a drift to leeward. Some of the crew had cleaned out the try-works, taking out the odds and ends and trash with which the pots were filled, and had laid a fire under them. Wood was used for this first fire, but after the first lot of blubber has been tried out, the scraps or “fritters”—blubber from which the oil has been tried, and which are fried crisp—are used for feeding the fire. They burn well and fiercely, with a huge volume of nauseous black smoke. The scraps remaining from one trying-out are kept to start the fire on the next occasion.