It is a most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold.
As its name imports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a
bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest
crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron.
Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it.
I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it.
It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from
the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him
to have been killed the first day after the venison season,
and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually
fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.
There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns
up in the course of this business, but which I feel it to be
very puzzling adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion;
an appellation original with the whalemen, and even so is
the nature of the substance. It is an ineffably oozy,
stringy affair, most frequently found in the tubs of sperm,
after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting.
I hold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured membranes
of the case, coalescing.
Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen,
but sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen.
Pages:
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684