Moby-Dick

towing Down and Clearing Up.

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!