{"id":"01KFNR89RDDFAVMPXA7E5AVXW0","cid":"bafkreieeebrivi4tw2jkuaber7alx6sxkjkkbg2qieebwatrmvz4umid7m","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":12078,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:04.729Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 0","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":12035,"text":"CHAPTER 67. Cutting In.\r\n\r\nIt was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio\r\nprofessors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was\r\nturned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would\r\nhave thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.\r\n\r\nIn the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous\r\nthings comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and\r\nwhich no single man can possibly lift—this vast bunch of grapes was\r\nswayed up to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the\r\nstrongest point anywhere above a ship’s deck. The end of the\r\nhawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was then conducted\r\nto the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over\r\nthe whale; to this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one\r\nhundred pounds, was attached. And now suspended in stages over the\r\nside, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their long spades,\r\nbegan cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just\r\nabove the nearest of the two side-fins. This done, a broad,\r\nsemicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted, and the\r\nmain body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence heaving\r\nin one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire ship\r\ncareens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like the nail-heads\r\nof an old house in frosty weather; she trembles, quivers, and nods her\r\nfrighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the\r\nwhale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a\r\nhelping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap\r\nis heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from\r\nthe whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it\r\nthe disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as\r\nthe blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange,\r\nso is it stripped off from the body precisely as an orange is sometimes\r\nstripped by spiralizing it. For the strain constantly kept up by the\r\nwindlass continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the\r\nwater, and as the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the\r\nline called the “scarf,” simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck\r\nand Stubb, the mates; and just as fast as it is thus peeled off, and\r\nindeed by that very act itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher\r\nand higher aloft till its upper end grazes the main-top; the men at the\r\nwindlass then cease heaving, and for a moment or two the prodigious\r\nblood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let down from the sky, and\r\nevery one present must take good heed to dodge it when it swings, else\r\nit may box his ears and pitch him headlong overboard.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 0"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84DCHGTDNX4G1R1YB64F","peer_label":"67","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84DCHGTDNX4G1R1YB64F","peer_label":"67","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR89S4G0G478ZA09S82MHX","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:05.314Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:16.481Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}