CUTTING IN AND TRYING OUT 143 



It was, I should say, twelve feet high at the crest 

 of the bow, and suggested some strange sort of 

 tent. I stepped inside it without bending my 

 head and walked about in it. Its sides were 

 shaggy with the long hair hanging from the 

 teeth or baleen, and the interior resembled, in a 

 way, a hunter's forest lodge made of pine 

 boughs. If the head had been in a forest instead 

 of on the deck of a ship it would have formed an 

 ideal shelter for a winter's night with a wood fire 

 burning at the opening. 



Only the lower tip of the head or what we 

 might call the nose rested on the deck. It was 

 supported otherwise upon the teeth. I now had 

 my first opportunity to see baleen in its natural 

 setting. The teeth viewed from the outside 

 looked something like the interior of a piano. 

 The whale's gums, following the bony skeleton 

 of the jaw, formed an arched and undulant line 

 from nose tip to the back of the jaw. The front 

 teeth were six inches long; the back ones were 

 ten feet. Each tooth, big and little alike, was 

 formed of a thin slab of bluish whalebone, al- 

 most flat. The largest of these slabs were six 



