Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

  CHAPTER 98

  Stowing Down and Clearing Up

  Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar offdescried from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors,and slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongsideand beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the headsmanof old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his great paddedsurtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in due time,he is condemned to the pots, and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed through the fire;--but nowit remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of the descriptionby rehearsing--singing, if I may--the romantic proceeding of decantingoff 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 :is before; but, alas! never moreto rise and blow.

  While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received intothe six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitchingand rolling this way and that in the midnight sea, the enormouscasks are slewed round and headed over, end for end, and sometimesperilously scoot across the slippery deck, like so many land slides,till at last man-handled and stayed in their course; and all roundthe 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 arethrown 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 mostremarkable incidents in all the business of whaling.One day the planks stream with freshets of blood and oil;on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of the whale's head areprofanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, as in a brewery yard;the smoke from the try-works has besooted all the bulwarks;the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entireship seems great leviathan himself; while on all handsthe din is deafening.

  But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your earsin this self-same ship! and were it not for the tell-tale boatsand try-works, you would all but swear you trod some silentmerchant vessel, with a most scrupulously neat commander.The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing virtue.This is the reason why the decks never look so white as justafter what they call an affair of oil. Besides, from the ashesof the burned scraps of the whale, a potent lye is readily made;and whenever any adhesiveness from the back of the whale remainsclinging to the side, that lye quickly exterminates it.Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and with bucketsof water and rags restore them to their full tidiness.The soot is brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerousimplements which have been in use are likewise faithfullycleansed and put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placedupon the try-works, completely hiding the pots; every caskis out of sight; all tackles are coiled in unseen nooks;and when by the combined and, simultaneous industry of almostthe entire ship's company, the whole of this conscientiousduty is at last concluded, then the crew themselves proceedto their own ablutions; shift themselves from top to toe;and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and all aglowas bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland.

  Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes,and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics;propose to mat the deck; think of having hangings to the top;object not to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle.To hint to such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber,were little short of audacity. They know not the thing you distantlyallude to. Away, and bring us napkins!

  But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand threemen intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught,infallibly will again soil the old oaken furniture, and dropat least one small grease-spot somewhere. Yes; and many isthe time, when, after the severest uninterrupted labors, which knowno night; continuing straight through for ninety-six hours;when from the boat, where they have swelled their wristswith all day rowing on the Line,--they only step to the deckto carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cutand slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be smokedand burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sunand the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this,they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and makea spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows,just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startledby the cry of "There she blows!" and away they fly to fightanother whale, and go through the whole weary thing again.Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life.For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from thisworld's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then,with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements,and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul;hardly is this done, when--There she blows!--the ghostis spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world,and go through young life's old routine again.

  Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece,two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailedwith thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage--and, foolish as I am,taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope.