Chapter 68.00: CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre.

**
CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre.
**

When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and weary
toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general thing at
least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting him in. For
that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very soon completed;
and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the common usage is to
take in all sail; lash the helm a’lee; and then send every one below to
his hammock till daylight, with the reservation that, until that time,
anchor-watches shall be kept; that is, two and two for an hour, each
couple, the crew in rotation shall mount the deck to see that all goes
well.

But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will not
answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather round the
moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours, say, on a stretch,
little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning. In most other
parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so largely abound,
their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably diminished, by
vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades, a procedure
notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to tickle them into
still greater activity. But it was not thus in the present case with the
Pequod’s sharks; though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such sights,
to have looked over her side that night, would have almost thought the
whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.

Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was
concluded; and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on
deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately
suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns,
so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two
mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant
murdering of the sharks,* by striking the keen steel deep into their
skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of
their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their
mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of
the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other’s disembowelments,
but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails
seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely
voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with
the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or
Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after
what might be called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted
on deck for the sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor
Queequeg’s hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his
murderous jaw.

*The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel; is
about the bigness of a man’s spread hand; and in general shape,
corresponds to the garden implement after which it is named; only its
sides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than the
lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible; and when being
used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a stiff
pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle.

“Queequeg no care what god made him shark,” said the savage, agonizingly
lifting his hand up and down; “wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de
god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.”