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Updated: May 26, 2025
It was accomplished at last, and the mass floated astern by a stout rope, after which the windlass pawls clattered merrily, the "blankets" rose in quick succession, and were cut off and lowered into the square of the main batch or "blubber-room."
Two men were now told off as "blubber-room men," whose duty it became to go below, and squeezing themselves in as best they could between the greasy masses of fat, cut it up into "horse-pieces" about eighteen inches long and six inches square.
As the stuff was gained, it was poured into large tanks in the blubber-room, the quantity being too great to be held by the try-pots at once.
Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men. The Cassock Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers.
Some of the men stripped to the waist, and, begrimed with smoke and oil, were working away with forks or ladles, either throwing in the blubber, chopped into small pieces, or skimming off the scraps, or baling out the oil; others of the men were in the blubber-room, heaving on deck the horse-pieces, of about thirty pounds weight each, to be minced fine before being thrown into the try-pots.
And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the general friction. The Blanket. I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of the whale.
And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the general friction. The Blanket I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of the whale.
While some of the men were down in the blubber-room cutting the "blanket-pieces," as the largest masses are called, others were pitching the smaller pieces on deck, where they were seized by two men who stood near a block of wood, called a "horse," with a mincing knife, to slash the junks so as to make them melt easily.
The heavers forward now resume their song, and while the one tackle is peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale, the other is slowly slackened away, and down goes the first strip through the main hatchway right beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the blubber-room.
It was cut off close to the deck, and lowered into the blubber-room, where the two men stationed there attacked it with knives, cut it into smaller pieces, and stowed it away.
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