CHAPTER SEVEN Whale Oil
CHAPTER SEVEN
Whale Oil
We had finally killed our first whale, but our work had just begun. Now we had to bring the huge corpse back to the Pequod and cut it up. Eighteen men pulled the whale with three small boats. The job was difficult and tiring - we worked hard for hours, but it never seemed to end.
When it was dark we were still pulling the dead body back to the boat. Three lanterns hanging from the Pequod helped us find our way back to the ship. As soon as we reached it Ahab looked at the whale with disappointment because it was not Moby Dick.
"Tie him up for the night!" he ordered angrily and went back to his cabin.
"Is that all he can say!" said Stubb. "Oh, who cares? This was a big day for me!" and he laughed. Nothing could make Stubb sad.
"Alright, men," Starbuck shouted, "tie up the whale! " We were exhausted after the whale hunt but we did not stop to rest - we got the heavy chains and started working. First we tied the head of the whale to the stern of the ship and the tail to the bow. The huge body now rested alongside the Pequod.
"Tomorrow we can begin cutting up the whale," said Stubb with satisfaction. That night he had whale steak for dinner.
After Stubb's dinner, Queequeg and another sailor went on deck and saw that sharks were beginning to eat the dead body of the whale. They were tearing violently at the whale's flesh. Blood flowed freely from the corpse.
"Put lanterns up over whale," said Queequeg to me. "Light up water and whale. " I immediately hung three lanterns on the ship. Their warm yellow light shone on the dead whale and the red sea. Dozens of hungry sharks attacked the corpse and its blood attracted more sharks. It was a terrible spectacle.
"They're eating our whale!" I cried.
Queequeg and the other sailor were lowered on platforms on the side of the ship and started hitting the sharks with their harpoons.
The two men attacked and killed many of the sharks, and finally the hungry creatures started eating each other. This went on for hours.
The next morning was Sunday - the day to start cutting what was left of the whale after the shark attack. This was a new job for me and I wanted to learn it. Every sailor became a butcher and we started cutting up the whale to get the oil it contained, about a hundred barrels. This, after all, was the purpose of our voyage.
The whale's head was the first part to be cut off, and it was a very difficult job because the head was about one-third of the whale's body. Stubb was an expert at cutting whales. He used long, sharp tools and had to work about ten feet above the whale. As he worked, the whale was still floating in the rough sea. He cut deep into the creature's body and through the spinal cord. When the head was cut off it was tied to the stern of the ship for later use.
We worked on the body of the whale next. We cut a small hole in its side and placed a big hook inside the hole. Then a deep line was cut into its flesh and we started pulling on a rope as the whale rolled over and over in the sea.
As the whale rolled the blubber began to break away from its body. The blubber stuck to the body of the whale like orange rind sticks to an orange. And just like an orange rind, the blubber came off in big strips.
As the blubber was peeled the body was slowly lifted out of the water. In the end there was just a bloody mass.
A harpooner picked up a very sharp tool called a boarding sword and said "Stay back" to all of us. Then he put his sword into the mass of blubber three times. He cut the blubber in two and brought it on the ship. We melted it down to oil, putting the precious liquid into barrels to take home.
Now we had to work on the head, an important part of the whale. Inside the head of the sperm whale there are hundreds of gallons of spermaceti. If a whaler is not skilled he can lose this precious substance.
Tashtego tied a thick rope around his waist and then lowered himself into the head of the whale. He started looking for the place where the spermaceti was.
Tashtego lowered a bucket inside the head. When he pulled it up it was full of spermaceti. This work went on for many long hours.
One of the whale's eyes stared at me - it was lifeless. How strange, I thought, our eyes are set in front of our head and we can see only one image, whatever is in front of us. The whale's eyes are set on both sides of its head so that it can see two different images - one on each side of its head. But people see things only one way - their way. If we could see two images instead of one then perhaps we could see two sides to everything.
This was Ahab's great problem. His obsession came from the fact that he could only see Moby Dick in one way - as evil.
Even though I hunted whales and I had sworn to help Ahab hunt Moby Dick, I could not see whales in only one way. I could not see them as all bad.
As I was thinking, Ahab came on deck and stood by me. He stared at the head of the whale and shook his head.
"Oh, head!" he said, "you've been to the bottom of all the oceans, you've seen the deepest mysteries of life, why can't you tell me about them? Why? " When we had finished working on the whale, we removed the big hooks and chains and the enormous body floated away from the ship and out to sea.
