Part 12

As they hove the blanket rose higher and higher, the cutters plied their spades, and the whale rolled over and over.

THE BLANKET PIECE COMING ABOARD

When the tackle was “block and block,” the third mate or one of the boatsteerers, with his “boarding knife,” made a hole for the second tackle.

A heavy blubber hook, or the eye in the long strop of the block in the foreground was pushed through and secured on the outside by a heavy wooden pin or toggle.

The second tackle was hove taut to take up the weight and the upper piece sliced off.

LOWERING INTO THE HOLD

As each piece was cut off, it was lowered down the main hatch into the blubber room and there cut into “horse pieces,” three or four feet long and six or eight inches wide.

MINCING

The horse pieces were tossed back on deck, where they were placed on a long plank set on tubs and “minced” into “books” or “bible pieces” with large two-handled knives.

The term “books” arose from the fact that the blubber was not cut quite through, and a minced piece bore a rough resemblance to the leaves of a book.

TRYING OUT

Day and night the try works were kept going, until all the blubber had been rendered.

Dense black smoke by day, and illuminated sails and rigging at night disclosed to passing ships the proximity of a whaler. Merchant sailors claimed they could smell a “spouter” over the horizon.

The furnace contained two large iron kettles similar to that in the foreground of the sketch. Beneath each of these was a separate fire grate, and under all--a shallow pan of water as safeguard.

The minced blubber was tried out in these kettles, and when the book pieces had given up their oil they were used as fuel. Enough of this “crackling” was kept to start the fires for the next whale.

As the oil filled the kettles, it was bailed off into a copper cooling tank--then to casks on deck where it cooled thoroughly for a day or two before being stowed away in the hold.

BAILING THE CASE

If the whale was small, the case was hoisted on deck where it was laid open and the liquid spermaceti saved with scoops and dippers,--but if it was too heavy for this it was secured to the side of the ship, nose end down. A hole was cut into the reservoir and a “case bucket” rigged from the mainyard and manipulated by four men,--one to handle the bucket, two on the guy lines to force it down by means of the pole, and the fourth to hoist and lower.

This oil often amounted to as much as thirty barrels of liquid spermaceti, which had only to be headed up without further treatment.

To this day there has been found no equal to this oil for the lubricating of watches and fine machinery.

CLEANING SHIP

By the time the oil was tried out and the stripped carcass cast adrift to make a royal feast for sharks and seabirds, the ship was a slithery mass of oil, gurry, and blood,--to which was added the effects of clouds of smut and black smoke from the try works.

All hands turned to clean ship. Ashes from the fires were sprinkled on the deck and bulwarks, and brooms and scrubbers were plied until she gleamed again,--except aloft, where the sails hung black and an affront to the eyes of clippermen. When the kettles had been scrubbed inside until they shone like silver punchbowls, the men turned their attention to themselves and their clothes.

To be clean again! How good it felt:--ship, gear, and man.

But how often was it no sooner achieved than a yell from the masthead announced

“She blows! She blows!”

and all the weary business had to be gone through with again.

MAIN HATCH SURGERY