LIFE ON A SOUTH SEA WHALER. 833 



The upper part of the head was now slit open lengthwise, disclosing 

 an oblong cistern or " case " full of liquid spermaceti, clear as water. 

 This was baled out with buckets into a tank, concreting as it cooled 

 into a waxlike substance, bland and tasteless. There being now noth- 

 ing more remaining about the skull of any value, the lashings were 

 loosed, and the first leeward roll sent the great mass plunging over- 

 board with a mighty splash. It sank like a stone, eagerly followed by 

 a few small sharks that were hovering near. 



As may be imagined, much oil was running about the deck, for 

 so saturated was every part of the creature with it that it really gushed 

 like water during the cutting-up process. None of it was allowed to 

 run to waste, though, for the scupper holes which drain the deck were 

 all carefully plugged, and as soon as the " junk " had been dissected all 

 the oil was carefully " squeegeed " up and poured into the try-pots. 



Two men were now told off as " blubber-room men," whose duty it 

 became to go below and, squeezing themselves in as best they could 

 between the greasy mass of fat, cut it up into " horse-pieces " about 

 eighteen inches long and six inches square. Doing this, they became 

 perfectly saturated with oil, as if they had taken a bath in a tank of it ; 

 for as the vessel rolled it was impossible to maintain a footing, and 

 every fall was upon blubber running with oil. A machine of wonder- 

 ful construction had been erected on deck in a kind of shallow trough 

 about six feet long by four feet wide and a foot deep. At some re- 

 mote period of time it had no doubt been looked upon as a triumph of 

 ingenuity, a patent mincing machine. Its action was somewhat like 

 that of a chaff-cutter, except that the knife was not attached to the 

 wheel, and only rose and fell, since it was not required to cut right 

 through the " horse-pieces " with which it was fed. It will be readily 

 understood that, in order to get the oil quickly out of the blubber, it 

 needs to be sliced as thin as possible, but for convenience in handling 

 the refuse (which is the only fuel used) it is not chopped up in small 

 pieces, but every " horse-piece " is very deeply scored as it were, leav- 

 ing a thin strip to hold the slices together. This, then, was the order 

 of work: Two harpooners attended the try-pots, replenishing them 

 with minced blubber from the hopper at the port side, and baling out 

 the sufficiently boiled oil into the great cooling tank on the star- 

 board. One officer superintended the mincing, another exercised a 

 general supervision over all. So we toiled watch and watch, six hours 

 on and six off, the work never ceasing for an instant night or day. 

 Though the work was hard and dirty, and the discomfort of being so 

 continually wet through with oil great, there was only one thing dan- 

 gerous about the whole business. That was the job of filling and 

 shifting the huge casks of oil. Some of these were of enormous size, 

 containing three hundred and fifty gallons when full, and the work 



VOL. MV. — 62 



