Sketches Afloat with the Whalers 279 



usually jabbed their spades into every shark 

 that came within reach, because of the quantity 

 of blubber taken. Killing or wounding a shark 

 always attracted the near-by sharks to it, and it 

 was devoured by them. 



The blanket pieces of blubber were cut into 

 chunks as large as a man could handle each 

 say as long as the blanket was wide, and a foot 

 or so wide. These were laid one at a time on 

 benches called "horses" and slices were cut, 

 something like the slices from a loaf of bread, only 

 the slice was not quite severed from the main 

 chunk. As these slices were connected together, 

 something like the leaves of a book, they were called 

 "books" and "bibles." The "books" of blubber 

 were pitched into the try-pots, which were huge iron 

 kettles, two or three in number, supported in 

 a brick furnace placed on deck abaft the fore- 

 mast. An iron pan full of water was placed 

 under the furnace as a precaution against fire. 

 The furnace was heated by burning "scrap," 

 the fibrous remainder left after the oil was ex- 

 tracted from the blubber. When a ship returned 

 home, it always carried enough scrap to start 



