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.
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