Chapter 100.00: CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.

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CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
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Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off descried
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 as
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!