And an idol, indeed, it is;
or rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol
as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea;
and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her,
and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination
at the brook Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapter
of the First Book of Kings.
Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along,
and assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus,
as the mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it
as if he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field.
Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically
to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa.
This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg;
gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double its diameter;
and at last hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, to dry.
Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some three feet of it,
towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two slits for arm-holes
at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it.
The mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicals
of his calling.
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