ALL IN A DAY'S WORK 171 



the whale, and in the early days of our American colonies it was 

 considered a cure for virtually every known disease. At last 

 they let go the empty case to follow the stripped carcass of the 

 old sea monster, where the birds above and the sharks below 

 were preying upon it. 



If, instead of a sperm whale, they had killed a right whale, 

 they would have cut in after much the same fashion until they 

 came to the head. To cut in "the old head " of the right whale, 

 they loosened the head and upper jaw from the body by cutting 

 from the back of the ''neck'' to the corners of the mouth, and by 

 the cutting tackle they hoisted the loosened part on deck. 

 They let the boneless lower jaw go. 



As the upper jaw rested on deck, balanced on the outermost 

 tip, or nose, and on the long baleen — the whalebone of com- 

 merce — it stood perhaps twelve feet high. The long shreds that 

 hung from the baleen gave the mouth a strangely shaggy ap- 

 pearance. The gums formed arches from the tip of the nose 

 to the back of the jaw, and the slabs of baleen varied from six 

 inches to fourteen feet in length, and from an inch to six inches 

 in width. The longest slabs were in the front of the mouth. 

 All were exceedingly flexible and tapered to a point, and though 

 the outer ends were easily pulled far apart, at the gums the 

 flat surfaces nearly touched one another. They cut the baleen 

 ''in bunches of ten or a dozen slabs held together by the gums" 

 and stowed it away. 



First, in preparing the blubber for the try-pots, they cut the 

 blanket-pieces into horse-pieces, which in any vessel were 

 roughly of the same size and shape, although size and shape 

 might vary considerably in different vessels and at different 

 periods. But whether the horse-pieces were fourteen inches 

 square, or six or eight inches wide and three feet or more long, 

 their fate was the same: the spade-men cut the blanket-piece 

 into horse-pieces while a man with a gaff held the blanket-piece 

 so far as possible from slipping; the horse-pieces they pitched 

 on deck and carried forward to the mincing-house, where with 

 heavy mincing-knives like two-handled cleavers (or, in later 

 days, with a mincing machine, which two men turned while one 



