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Therein were cables, windlasses and blocks of every size and capacity; cabin windows and ladders; rusty tanks, a companion hutch; a binnacle with its brass mountings and its compass idly pointing, in the confusion and dusk of that shed, to a forgotten pole; ropes, anchors, harpoons, a blubber dipper of copper, green with years, a steering wheel, a tool chest with the vessel's name upon the top, the Asia: a whole curiosity-shop of sea curios, gross and solid, heavy to lift, ill to break, bound with brass and shod with iron.
As it was, had I been likely to run short of burning fluid I surely would have endeavored to "try out" some of the blubber. I knew that, before the day of mineral oil kerosene people used whale oil almost altogether for lamps. But I was fortunately well supplied with oil, water and food.
We don't like to get among the ice pack, for fear it should nip our toes: but the mollys dare fly anywhere." So the petrels called to the mollys: but they were so busy and greedy, gobbling and peeking and spluttering and fighting over the blubber, that they did not take the least notice.
Found party much shorter of blubber than I had expected they were only just keeping themselves supplied with a seal killed two days before and one as we arrived. Actually less fast ice than when we left! Wednesday, April 19. Hut Point. Calm during night, sea froze over at noon, 4 1/2 inches thick off Hut Point, showing how easily the sea will freeze when the chance is given.
"And mighty little chance I would stand of ever getting there if I should sit down like you and begin to blubber. Come out of the carriage and go with me." Nellie's face was very red and there were tears on her cheeks, her countenance wearing a strange appearance in the lurid haze around them.
Unrolling the bear-skin, which yet retained a little of its first owner's warmth, he wrapped the Kablunet in it from head to foot, leaving an opening in front of his mouth for breathing purposes. With his knife a stone one he cut off a little lump of blubber from the seal, and placed that in the opening, so that the stranger might eat on reviving, if so inclined, or let it alone, if so disposed.
Five Weddells and two crab-eaters were shot on the floe during the morning of March 1, and the wind, with fine drifting snow, sprang up while the carcasses were being brought in by sledging parties. The men were compelled to abandon some of the blubber and meat, and they had a struggle to get back to the ship over the rough ice in the teeth of the storm.
"After we had thus secured, in this snow-and-ice cave, our stock of blubber, we constructed another much like it near by for our food, and into this we had soon gathered a pretty large stock of ducks and eggs. "When we contemplated all that we had done in this particular, you may be sure our spirits rose very much." "Odd, wasn't it?" said Fred, "having a storehouse made of ice and snow.
It was good to eat seal-liver again; to fill the lamps recklessly with blubber, and watch the flame blaze three feet in the air; but as soon as the new sea-ice bore, Kotuko and the girl loaded the hand-sleigh, and made the two dogs pull as they had never pulled in their lives, for they feared what might have happened in their village.
These changes were made because the blubber of the bowhead is so thick that ordinary harpoons will not penetrate beyond it to the muscle, which, unless they do, renders them liable to draw, upon a heavy strain. As for the bombs, Yankees hold the mysticetae in such supreme contempt that none of them would dream of wasting so expensive a weapon as a bomb upon them.
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