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MOBY DICK; OR 
ances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He goes 
and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and genuineness, 
even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own supper of game. 
CHAPTER XCYII 
STOWING DOWN AND CLEAEING UP 
Aleeady has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off des- 
cried from the masthead ; how he is chased over the watery moors, and 
slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongside 
and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the headsman 
of old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his great 
padded surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in due 
time, he is condemned to the pots, and how his spermaceti, oil, and 
hone pass unscathed through the fire. But now it remains to conclude 
the last chapter of this part of the description by rehearsing — singing, 
if I may — the romantic proceeding of decanting off his oil into the 
casks and striking them down into the hold, where once again leviathan 
returns to his native profundities, sliding along beneath the surface as 
before ; hut, alas ! never more to rise and blow. 
While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the six- 
barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling this 
way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed 
round and headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot 
across the slippery deck, like so many land-slides, till at last man- 
handled and stayed in their course ; and all round the hoops, rap, rap, 
go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, ex officio , every 
sailor is a cooper. 
At length when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the great 
hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open, and 
down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the hatches 
are replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet walled up. 
In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable 
incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream 
with freshets of blood and oil ; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous 
