“Cutting in.”
As we are now ready to “cut in” the whale, we will briefly explain
the _modus operandi_. In the first place the decks are cleared,
in order to have room to work. The ponderous cutting tackles are
swayed up to the lower-mast head (the main), the strongest point
any where above a ship’s deck. Large hawsers are then rove through
these blocks, then through similar ones on deck, to the windlass,
in the forward part of the ship. To the lower blocks are attached
ponderous iron hooks, weighing over one hundred pounds each. These
hooks are for the purpose of “hooking on” to the blubber, and can be
put on and taken off the blocks at pleasure. And now, suspended in
stages over the side, the first and second mates, armed with their
long spades, begin cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of
the hook just above one of the fins. This done, a broad semicircular
line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted, and the main body
of the crew, striking up a wild chorus, now commence heaving at the
windlass. The entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her
starts like the nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather; she
trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mastheads to the sky. More
and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of
the windlass is answered by a helping heave of the billows, till at
last a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship
rolls upward and backward from the whale, and the triumphant tackle
rises into sight, dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end
of the first strip of blubber. Now, as the blubber envelops the
whale, as we described in the last chapter, precisely as the rind
does an orange, so is it stripped off the body precisely as an orange
is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. The strain, constantly kept
up by the windlass, continually keeps the whale rolling over and over
in the water; and as the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off
along the line called the “scarf,” simultaneously cut by the spades
of the mates—the chief mate separating the head from the body while
the whale is being rolled over the first time—and just as fast as it
is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the
time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes
the main-top; the men at the windlass then cease heaving, and for a
moment or two the prodigious, blood-dripping mass sways to and fro as
if let down from the sky; and every one present must take good care
to dodge it when it swings, else it may box his ears and pitch him
overboard.
One of the attending boat-steerers now advances with a long, keen
weapon, called a boarding-knife, and, watching his opportunity, he
dexterously slices out a considerable hole in the lower part of the
swaying mass. Into this hole the end of the second alternating great
tackle is hooked, so as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order
to prepare for what follows. Whereupon this accomplished swordsman,
warning all hands to stand off, once more makes a scientific dash
at the mass, and with a few sidelong, desperate, lunging slicings,
severs it completely in two; so that, while the short lower part
is still fast, the long upper strip, the “blanket piece,” swings
clear, and is all ready for lowering. The heavers forward now resume
their song and their work, and, while the one tackle is peeling and
hoisting a second strip from the whale, the other is slowly slackened
away, and down goes the first strip through the main hatchway right
beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the “blubber-room.” Into
this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the
long blanket-pieces, as if they were a great live mass of plaited
serpents. And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and
lowering simultaneously, both whale and windlass heaving, the crew
singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates cutting,
the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of
assuaging the general friction.
And now the “body” of the whale is all in; the carcass has floated
off, food for the sharks; the head, which has been made fast
alongside the ship, is brought to the gangway, and the junk is
separated from the case, and “hove in” on deck. Now comes the bailing
of the case. It is hoisted up alongside the gangway, nearly level
with the ship’s deck; a “whip” is rigged, being simply a rope, one
end on deck, the other passing through a single block made fast to
the main-yard, to which is attached a bucket of the capacity of about
a gallon. One of the boat-steerers stands on the end of the case,
with a short spade cuts a hole in the case, and the bucket is then
sunk into it by means of a long pole, until it is filled, when it is
hoisted out and emptied, and so on until the liquid oil is all bailed
out. From the case of a hundred-barrel sperm whale from fifteen to
seventeen barrels of liquid oil is generally obtained, though a great
deal is unavoidably wasted. After the case is bailed it is cut loose,
and immediately sinks with great rapidity.