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 in one dense crowd at the windlass.
When instantly, the entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt
in her starts like the nailheads of an old house in frosty weather;
she trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads 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 from the billows;
till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great
swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards 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 envelopes the whale precisely as the rind
does an orange, so is it stripped off from the body precisely
as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it.
For 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 Starbuck
and Stubb, the mates; 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 heed to dodge it when it swings, else it may box his ears
and pitch him headlong overboard.
Pages:
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501