THE WHITE WHALE 387 
per is a short, firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part 
of Leviathan’s tail : it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, 
is about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the 
oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless blan- 
dishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities. 
But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at 
once to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its 
inmates. This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle 
for the blanket-pieces, when stripped and hoisted from the whale. 
When the proper time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apart- 
ment is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one 
side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen. 
They generally go in pairs, — a pike-and-gaff-man and a spade-man. 
The whaling-pike is similar to a frigate’s boarding-weapon of the same 
name. The gaff is something like a boathook. With his gaff, the gaff- 
man hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, 
as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man 
stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable 
horse-pieces. The spade is sharp as hone can make it ; the spade-man’s 
feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly 
slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, 
or one of his. assistants’, would you be very much astonished? Toes 
are scarce among veteran blubber-room men. 
CHAPTER XCIV 
THE cassock: 
Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this 
post-mortemising of the whale ; and had you strolled forward nigh the 
windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small 
curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have 
seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee-scuppers. Hot the won- 
drous cistern in the whale’s* huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged 
lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail ; none of these would 
so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone, — longer 
