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MOBY DICK; OR 
fast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys; they open 
direct from the rear wall. And here let ns go back for a moment. 
It was about nine o’clock at night that the Pequod’s try-works were 
first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee 
the business. 
“All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You, cook, fire 
the works.” This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been 
thrusting his shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here 
be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to 
be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a 
means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being 
tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, 
still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters 
feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming 
misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns 
by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his 
smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, 
but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, 
Hindoo odour about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal 
pyres. 
By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from 
the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild 
ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the 
fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and 
illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek 
fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned 
to some vengeful deed. So the pith and sulphur-freighted brigs of 
the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbours, 
with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frig- 
ates, and folded them in conflagrations. 
The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide 
hearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes 
of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale ship’s stokers. With huge 
pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding 
pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curl- 
ing, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled 
