" DIETY WORK FOR CLEAN MONET." 51 



feet, and the knowledge that one stumbling man would 

 mean a sudden slide of the ton and a half weight, and 

 a little heap of mangled corpses somewhere in the lee 

 scnppers — well one always wanted to be very thankful 

 when the lashings were safely passed. 



The whale being a small one, as before noted, 

 the whole business was over within three days, and 

 the decks scrubbed and re-scrubbed until they had quite 

 regained their normal whiteness. The oil was poured 

 by means of a funnel and long canvas hose into the 

 casks stowed in the ground tier at the bottom of the 

 ship, and the gear, all carefully cleaned and neatly 

 " stopped up," stowed snugly away below again. 



This long and elaborate process is quite different 

 from that followed on board the Arctic whaleships, whose 

 voyages are of short duration, and who content themselves 

 with merely cutting the blubber up small and bringing 

 it home to have the oil expressed. But the awful putrid 

 mass discharged from a Greenlander's hold is of very 

 different quality and value, apart from the nature of 

 the substance, to the clear and sweet oil, which after three 

 years in cask is landed from a south-seaman as in- 

 offensive in smell and flavour as the day it was shipped. 

 No attempt is made to separate the oil and spermaceti 

 beyond boiling the " head matter," as it is called, by 

 itself first, and putting it into casks which are not filled 

 up with the body oil. Spermaceti exists in all the oil, 

 especially that from the dorsal hump ; but it is left for 

 the refiners ashore to extract and leave the oil quite free 

 from any admixture of the wax-like substance, which 

 causes it to become solid at temperatures considerably 

 above the freezing-point. 



Uninteresting as the preceding description may be, 



