95. CHAPTER XCV.
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. Not the wondrous cistern in
the whale's huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower
jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these
would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable
cone,—longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter
at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg.
And an idol, indeed, it is; or, rather, in old times, its likeness
was. Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen
Maachah in Judea; and for worshipping which, king Asa, her
son, did depose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an
abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly set forth in the
15th chapter of the first book of Kings.
Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along,
and assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as
the mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off
with it as if he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from
the field. Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds
cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter
the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt inside out, like
a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as almost to
double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the
rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing
some three feet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then
cutting two slits for arm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise
slips himself bodily into it. The mincer now stands before you
invested in the full canonicals of his calling. Immemorial to all
his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect him,
while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.
That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber
for the pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious
wooden horse, planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with
a capacious tub beneath it, into which the minced pieces drop,
fast as the sheets from a rapt orator's desk. Arrayed in decent
black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves;
what a candidate for an archbishoprick, what a lad for a Pope
were this mincer![1]
[1]
Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the
mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into
as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling
out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased,
besides perhaps improving it in quality.
