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Updated: May 4, 2025
But having, no doubt, accompanied the chase at the time the cachalot had been harpooned, they were now staying by a dead body, from an instinct that told them its destroyers would return, and supply them with its flesh in convenient morsels, while occupied in flensing it. "Ugh!" exclaimed the sailor; "they look hungry enough to bite at any bait we may throw out to them.
A score of sharks were just below, waiting for him with hungry jaws, and eyes glancing greedily upward. Seeing the two men mounted upon the carcass of the whale, and one wielding an axe, they had gathered upon that side, in the belief that the flensing was about to begin! It was a slight circumstance that saved the sea-cook from being eaten up, not only raw, but alive.
Levick's medical duties were very light indeed: they included the stopping of one of Campbell's teeth, and the latter says, "As he had been flensing a seal a few days before, his fingers tasted strongly of blubber." Priestly took charge of the meteorology for this station in addition to his own special subjects.
And so saying, the sailor returned to the operation, thus temporarily suspended, the flensing of the shark. The fish that had thus singularly fallen into their hands was, as Ben had stated, the sucking-fish, Echeneis remora, one of the most curious creatures that inhabit the sea. Not so much from any peculiarity in appearance as from the singularity of its habits.
But the most persevering visitors during the operation of flensing were the sailors' little friends the Mollies. The moment the fish was struck they had begun to assemble, and they were now pecking and tearing away at the flesh with the greatest impudence, even among the men's long knives.
It wanted but a little while of sunset, when the sailor and his young comrade had finished flensing the shark. The raft now exhibited quite an altered appearance. Between the two upright oars several pieces of rope had been stretched transversely, and from these hung suspended the broad thin flitches of the shark's flesh, that at a distance might have been mistaken for some sort of a sail.
The mortification of this event may be conceived, but the termination of their vexation will not easily be imagined, when it is known, that no other opportunity of procuring a whale occurred during the voyage. The ship returned home clean. Flensing in a swell is a most difficult and dangerous undertaking; and when the swell is at all considerable, it is commonly impracticable.
They were not only cheered by a dram of spirits, but sometimes provided with some favorite "mess," on which to regale themselves, before they commenced the arduous task of flensing. At such a period, the crew of an English vessel had captured their first whale.
It was deserted; for the whales had not yet come in, and there was no chance of seeing a night scene which is described as horribly beautiful the sharks around a whale while flensing is going on, each monster bathed in phosphorescent light, which makes his whole outline, and every fin, even his evil eyes and teeth, visible far under water, as the glittering fiend comes up from below, snaps his lump out of the whale's side, and is shouldered out of the way by his fellows.
The flag was lowered, and the men, standing up in the boats, gave three loud huzzas, which were echoed by those on board. Two holes being made in the tail of the whale, ropes were passed through them, which being made fast to the boats, they towed their prize in triumph to the ship. The animal now being secured alongside, the process of flensing or cutting off the blubber commenced.
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