{"id":"01KJNXJR15V1NJY388DTWNPV30","cid":"bafkreiby2nq3yb6tw7pkltaju6gblckavic7q6a3u536nvutbll7glbt64","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":683630,"char_start":675775,"chunk_index":95,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1964,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in\r\ntheir very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual\r\nlife had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin,\r\none of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg’s hand off, when he tried\r\nto shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.\r\n\r\n*The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel;\r\nis about the bigness of a man’s spread hand; and in general shape,\r\ncorresponds to the garden implement after which it is named; only its\r\nsides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than\r\nthe lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible; and when\r\nbeing used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a\r\nstiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle.\r\n\r\n“Queequeg no care what god made him shark,” said the savage,\r\nagonizingly lifting his hand up and down; “wedder Fejee god or\r\nNantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 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\nOne of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen weapon\r\ncalled a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he dexterously slices\r\nout a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass. Into\r\nthis hole, the end of the second alternating great tackle is then\r\nhooked so as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare for\r\nwhat follows. Whereupon, this accomplished swordsman, warning all hands\r\nto stand off, once more makes a scientific dash at the mass, and with a\r\nfew sidelong, desperate, lunging slicings, severs it completely in\r\ntwain; so that while the short lower part is still fast, the long upper\r\nstrip, called a blanket-piece, swings clear, and is all ready for\r\nlowering. The heavers forward now resume their song, and while the one\r\ntackle is peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale, the other\r\nis slowly slackened away, and down goes the first strip through the\r\nmain hatchway right beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the\r\nblubber-room. Into this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep\r\ncoiling away the long blanket-piece as if it were a great live mass of\r\nplaited serpents. And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting\r\nand lowering simultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving, the\r\nheavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates\r\nscarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by\r\nway of assuaging the general friction.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 68. The Blanket.\r\n\r\nI have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin\r\nof the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced\r\nwhalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion\r\nremains unchanged; but it is only an opinion.\r\n\r\nThe question is, what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you\r\nknow what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence\r\nof firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and\r\nranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.\r\n\r\nNow, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any\r\ncreature’s skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet\r\nin point of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption;\r\nbecause you cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the\r\nwhale’s body but that same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer\r\nof any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that be but the skin?\r\nTrue, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you may scrape off with\r\nyour hand an infinitely thin, transparent substance, somewhat\r\nresembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is almost as\r\nflexible and soft as satin; that is, previous to being dried, when it\r\nnot only contracts and thickens, but becomes rather hard and brittle. I\r\nhave several such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whale-books.\r\nIt is transparent, as I said before; and being laid upon the printed\r\npage, I have sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a\r\nmagnifying influence. At any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales\r\nthrough their own spectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving at\r\nhere is this. That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I\r\nadmit, invests the entire body of the whale, is not so much to be\r\nregarded as the skin of the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to\r\nspeak; for it were simply ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of\r\nthe tremendous whale is thinner and more tender than the skin of a\r\nnew-born child. But no more of this.\r\n\r\nAssuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin,\r\nas in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one\r\nhundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity,\r\nor rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three\r\nfourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence\r\nbe had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose\r\nmere integument yields such a lake of liquid as 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