She Blows! And Sparm at That!

by William John Hopkins

With that he lifted his hand from the small thing it covered, which was of ivory, one of the larger teeth of our only whale. This thing of Peter’s was already plainly a model of the hull of the Clearchus, although there had not been time to do more than roughly shape it. Even with the largest tooth used for it, the model was on a very small scale, only about five and a half inches long.

I forgot entirely my grievance against the second mate, and could only look at it longingly, as a dog eyes a bone, licking my chops.

Peter laughed to see me. “Do you know what it is to be, then?”

“Anybody would know that. It will be beautiful, Peter. Do—do you suppose I ’ll ever be able to do anything like that?”

“You ’re able to do something like that now. It ’s nothing now, but you wait till I have it farther along. I have to shape it a bit more to make it a true copy—and it ’s going to be a true copy, Timmie—and then I ’ll cut the deck down to show the rail. Every plank, chain plate, and bolt that shows on the outside of the ship is going to show on this model. Then I have to build the deckhouses out of plates of ivory scraped thin, and build the try-works, and step ivory masts, and rig her with ivory spars and ivory sails scraped thin as paper. And there ’s to be ivory blocks, and the rigging ’s to be silk thread. It ’ll be quite proper, and scraped and polished till it shines. I have it in my mind, and it grows as I get on. Aye, it ’ll be quite proper.”

It was quite proper. As I raise my eyes to the mantel, there sits the dainty model now. Much of the rigging of silk thread is rotten and brittle, and breaks at a touch; but the rest of Peter’s handiwork is of more enduring stuff, although yellow with age. It makes me positively homesick to see the very decks that I trod, the wheel under its roof and the rail at the stern upon which I had leaned so many times, looking over the sluggish wake, the gangway with the cutting-stage in place, the great blocks of the cutting-tackles, the try-works with the bench against its after side; every detail of the ship and its fittings reproduced, even to the boats lashed to their stiff davits, the cranes swung out for them to rest upon, and little harpoons and lances and spades in place. The paper-thin, translucent ivory sails still hang from their ivory yards and belly with the breeze. It makes me homesick, I say, and makes that time—it was a happy time, on the whole—it makes that time even more real than does my journal, which lies before me. At the time when I first saw that model, however, rough as it then was, I could only gape and smile, and I said nothing coherent, I think.

The teeth that were used for scrimshawing—and for many other purposes, for on some of the islands of the South Seas whales’ teeth had a high value—the teeth were salvaged by the crew after the cutting-in and trying-out were over. I have described the cutting off of the lower jaw, and getting it on deck, where it was put at one side, out of the way, until the more serious business of trying-out the oil and getting it below decks was over. One jaw is much like another; that is, unless it happens to be deformed, and deformed jaws are more frequently seen than one would believe. We got two, and one of them was so badly deformed that the tip of the jaw was curled tightly around twice, making a tight spiral. It has always been a mystery to me how a whale could get a living with a jaw like that, but they seem to have no difficulty in doing so. Both of our whales with freak jaws were in excellent condition. Deformation of the jaws is supposed to be due to the whales’ fighting among themselves. I know of no first-hand information on that point, but the bull whales certainly fight viciously on occasion. A deformed jaw, however, is usually cleaned and kept for museum purposes.

Extracting the teeth is generally an occasion for hilarity among the crew. You will see the hinge of the great jaw at the yardarm, and a giggling, shouting mob, armed with spades and saws, about its lower end, which is on the deck. A whip tackle is also on the yard, its lower end brought down to the deck. Then they fall to with their spades, cutting the flesh away from the lower part of the tooth and loosening it, and completing the extraction by main strength, very much after the fashion of a dentist, but by means of the falls instead of forceps. Often the loop slips off of the tooth suddenly, letting down the men who are swaying away on the falls, and starting shouts of laughter. Or the whole strip of teeth may come together, held together by the gums. When the teeth have all been drawn the jaw is sawed into slabs for convenient use, for the jawbone is very hard and close-grained.

I was to have a share of the teeth obtained in this way. Peter must have known what I wanted, for he produced a slab sawed from a tooth, and started me at once on an ivory spoon, on which I was busy for several days, in my spare time, and in much time that was not spare. Your whaleman gets so interested in his scrimshawing very often, that he neglects his duties. I was no exception. The spoon was intended for my mother. When that was done, I began an elaborate pie-marker, a jagging-wheel, also intended for my mother, and changed the destination of the spoon to my father. The pie-marker consisted of a wheel, the edge of which was to be cut in very intricate convolutions, turning in an ivory handle. I planned this handle in the figure of a sperm whale holding the wheel between his jaws, and I meant to carve him within an inch of his life. Peter did not discourage me, probably thinking that my plan was as good as another for giving me practice. I did carve him within an inch of his life, or within rather less than that; but I was not satisfied with the result, and tried to improve it, “improving” it several times, and at last producing a very lean and skinny whale. I did not dare to make further improvements, although the whale seemed very much out of health. The carving of the wheel, too, left something to be desired, and the convolutions were less intricate than I hoped for. Peter comforted me somewhat with the observation that it would be easier to clean, and that if I had made it as I had planned, it would have cut out a great many little pieces of dough, which would infallibly have got stuck in it, and which my mother would have had to pick out with a sharp knife or a wire—or perhaps a hairpin. That was Peter’s little joke, not mine. My mother must have liked her pie-marker, crude as it was, for she used it as long as she lived, and kept it hanging from a hook in the edge of the kitchen shelf, within reach of her hand. She never had to use a hair-pin on it.