388 
MOBY DICK; OR 
than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and 
jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, 
it is; or rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that 
found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea; and for wor- 
shipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed the 
idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly 
set forth in the fifteenth chapter of the First Book of Kings. 
Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and 
assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners 
call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a 
grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon 
the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark 
pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the 
pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as 
almost to double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the 
rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some 
three feet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two 
slits for arm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily 
into it. The mincer now stands before you invested in the full ca- 
nonicals of his calling. Immemorial to all his order, this investiture 
alone will adequately protect him while employed in the peculiar func- 
tions of his office. 
That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the 
pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse, 
planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub be- 
neath it, into which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a 
rapt orator’s desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicu- 
ous pulpit; intent on Bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbish- 
opric, what a lad for a Pope were this mincer ! 1 
1 Bible leaves ! Bible leaves ! This is the invariable cry from the mates 
to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as thin 
slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the oil is 
much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps 
improving it in quality. 
