279 
THE WHITE WHALE 
seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be 
called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck 
for the sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Quee- 
queg’s hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his mur- 
derous jaw. 
CHAPTER LXVI 
CUTTING-IN - 
It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed ! Ex-officio 
professors of Sabbath-breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod 
was turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You 
would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the 
sea gods. 
In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponder- 
ous things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and 
which no single man can possibly lift — this vast bunch of grapes was 
swayed up to the maintop and firmly lashed to the lower masthead, 
the strongest point anywhere above a ship’s deck. The end 6f the 
hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was then conducted 
to the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung 
over the whale ; to this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one 
hundred pounds, was attached. And now suspended in stages over the 
side, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their long spades, 
began cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just 
above the nearest of the two side-fins. This done, a broad, semi-circular 
line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted, and the main body of 
the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence heaving in one 
dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire ship careens 
over on her side; every bolt in her starts like the nail-heads of an old 
house in frosty weather; she trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted 
mastheads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while 
every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave 
from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a 
great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and 
the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged 
