170 WHALING 



a hole cut for it, they then severed the backbone just abaft the 

 sL:u]l, or so fixed the head by an oaken post braced against a 

 plate on the side of the ship that the backbone twisted in two as 

 they peeled the blubber from the revolving body, and let the 

 head pass astern. 



Abaft the forecastle of the typical whaler was the forehold 

 where they stored spades and cutting tackles and spare oars and 

 lumber, and hawsers and ropes and cordage. Then, continuing 

 aft on the lower deck, came the blubber room under the main 

 hatch, and still farther aft, the steerage. As the big blanket- 

 pieces descended down through the hatch into the blubber 

 room, men waiting in the dim light coiled them and stowed 

 them away, till, in a small vessel, the rising surface of oily blub- 

 ber from a large whale would show at the deck above. 



Then, if the whale was small, they hoisted on deck the head 

 that had meanwhile been towing astern. If the whale was 

 large, they swung the head forward and hoisted it up by the 

 rail, where it hung partly suspended in the air and partly in 

 the sea. And it was no trifling matter. '' While the head of one 

 of the whales was being received on board,'' says Bennett in his 

 "Narrative of a Whaling Voyage Round the Globe," ''it sud- 

 denly fell, owing to some defect in the suspending tackle, and 

 at each lurch of the ship, traversed the deck in a terrific manner, 

 until, settling for a moment at the lee bulwark, it was secured, 

 without having done further mischief than crushing a strong 

 bucket as if it had been a nut shell, and destroying a luckless 

 pig, en passant." 



The jaw, when removed and raised on deck, yielded a harvest 

 of ivory teeth, that furnished the whalemen with the raw 

 materials of scrimshaw work. The junk, too, they cut away 

 and hoisted on deck to be tried out later. Then, rigging a 

 whip from the mainyard arm and cutting through into that 

 cistern of pure spermaceti, the case, they plunged into it the 

 case bailer — a tall, narrow bucket, heavily weighted at the 

 rounded lower end — drove it down with a pole, and hauled 

 it up dripping with the limpid and fragrant sperm. There 

 were hundreds of gallons of it, most valuable of all products of 



