CHAPTER 95

  The Cassock

  Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this

post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the

windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small

curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have

seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the

wondrous cistern in the whale's huge head; not the prodigy of his

unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of

these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable

cone,- longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at

the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an

idol, indeed, it is; or rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such

an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in

Judea; and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her,

and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook

Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapter of the First Book of

Kings.

  Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and

assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the

mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if

he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field.

Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically

to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa.

This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it

a good stretching, so as almost to double its diameter; and at last

hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken

down; when removing some three feet of it, towards the pointed

extremity, and then cutting two slits for arm-holes at the other

end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The mincer now stands

before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling.

Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately

protect him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.

  That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for

the pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse,

planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath

it, into which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a

rapt orator's desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous

pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishopric,

what a lad for a Pope were this mincer!*

  *Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the

mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work

into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the

business of boiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its

quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps improving it in

quality.