CHAPTER 98

  Stowing Down and Clearing Up

  Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off

described from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery

moors, and slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then

towed alongside and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled

the headsman of old to the garments in which the beheaded was

killed) his great padded surtout becomes the property of his

executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots, and,

like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone

pass unscathed through the fire;- but now it remains to conclude the

last chapter of this part of the description by rehearsing- singing,

if I may- the romantic proceeding of decanting off his oil into the

casks and striking them down into the hold, where once again leviathan

returns to his native profundities, sliding along beneath the

surface :is before; but, alas! never more to rise and blow.

  While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the

six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling

this way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed

round and headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot

across the slippery deck, like so many land slides, till at last

man-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the hoops,

rap, rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, ex

officio, every sailor is a cooper.

  At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the

great hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown

open, and down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done,

the hatches are replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet

walled up.

  In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable

incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream

with freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous

masses of the whale's head are profanely piled; great rusty casks

lie about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has

besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with

unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while

on all hands the din is deafening.

  But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in

this self-same ship! and were it not for the tell-tale boats and

try-works, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant

vessel, with a most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured

sperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the

reason why the decks never look so white as just after what they

call an affair of oil. Besides, from the ashes of the burned scraps of

the whale, a potent lye is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness

from the back of the whale remains clinging to the side, that lye

quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and

with buckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness.

The soot is brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous

implements which have been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed and

put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the try-works,

completely hiding the pots; every cask is out of sight; all tackles

are coiled in unseen nooks; and when by the combined and, simultaneous

industry of almost the entire ship's company, the whole of this

conscientious duty is at last concluded, then the crew themselves

proceed to their own ablutions; shift themselves from top to toe;

and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow as

bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland.

  Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes,

and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine

cambrics; propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top;

object not to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle.

To hint to such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were

little short of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude

to. Away, and bring us napkins!

  But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men

intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will

again soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small

grease-spot somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the

severest uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing

straight through for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where

they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line,-

they only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy

windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be

smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and

the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this, they have

finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a

spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just

buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry

of "There she blows!" and away they fly to fight another whale, and go

through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this is

man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long

toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but

valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from

its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of

the soul; hardly is this done, when- There she blows!- the ghost is

spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through

young life's old routine again.

  Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two

thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed

with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage- and, foolish as I

am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope.