The head of the sperm whale, as seen from the side, is roughly rectangular in outline, with an exaggerated upper jaw which seems out of all manner of proportion to the lower. In large whales the height of the square forehead or nose is eleven to thirteen feet, and the width of it nine to eleven feet, while the lower jaw is slender and pointed. This exaggeration of the upper part of the head does not argue anything in regard to the size of the brain, as might naturally be supposed. The brain is placed in a normal position in regard to the eye, which is a little above and behind the angle of the mouth, and appears to be set too low down in the head.

All of this huge upper part of the head is nothing but an excrescence: a tough, fibrous or fatty matter, in which there can be little feeling if there is any. Whales sometimes ram ships, striking them with that upper part of the head or nose—and sink them, too—and swim raging off, apparently little the worse for the encounter. There are some well-authenticated cases which I cannot be expected to remember, for they happened many years before I was born. I refer especially to the cases of the Ann Alexander and the Essex, which were sunk by whales, and there have been others. There is no doubt about it, although the fact has been doubted by a good many people who knew nothing about whales. You would never have found a whaleman who doubted it. I know of one case, at least, which occurred well within my recollection. The Kathleen was sunk by a whale in 1902, several hundred miles from land, and the crew took to the boats, cheerfully enough, I do not doubt, with the prospect before them of a voyage of over a week at the very least, and possibly two or three. The master of the Kathleen lived within a block of me. His wife was on that voyage, with her parrot, which lived to tell the tale. These same Bolshevik whales can carry timbers, from the bows of ships which they have sunk, embedded in their heads for years without apparent inconvenience.

However, the primary purpose of that exaggeration of the upper jaw is not to serve as a battering ram. In the upper part of that great growth is a well of the purest oil extending very nearly the length of the head. This is called the “case.” Just what its purpose is nobody seems to know, although there have been many guesses. One of these guesses is that the well of oil helps to float the heavy head; but this guess can hardly be right, for the head, when severed, immediately turns, with the spiracle, or blow-hole, down.

Between the case and the skull lies the “junk,” of still tougher material than the case, but containing considerable oil, although it is not contained in a single well. The cells of the junk are from four to eight inches across, filled with faintly yellow oil, or oily substance, which is translucent when warm. The walls of these cells are composed of extremely tough, interlacing fibres, or ligaments, called “white horse.” The separation of the junk from the case is on a very nearly horizontal line running through the nose just above the bump—or what looks like a bump. The contents of the case seem to be liquid during the life of the whale, but after the body becomes cold, they become partly solid. The solid part is spermaceti.

The skull, if separated from the excrescence, bears some resemblance to the head of an alligator, and the eye seems to be set right enough. This separation of the head into its parts was what Mr. Wallet and Mr. Brown were proceeding to accomplish. While they were cutting the case from the junk, Macy and George Hall, boat-steerers for the first and second mates, rove ropes in each cheek for the chains which were to hold the case. When the separation was complete, the case was passed astern, held by chains, nose down in the water, until the cutting-in should be finished and the carcass cut adrift. The junk was then cut away from the skull and hoisted bodily on deck. During the operation of cutting the junk from the skull, they cut alongside and close to the skull, and as they could not see what they were cutting, but had to go by feeling, there were several spades spoiled. The cutters passed these dulled spades in on deck, and freshly sharpened spades were passed to them. I heard the noise of the grindstone during the whole operation.

They were a long time in cutting the junk and the case, and there was nothing to see except the swarming sharks, and I got tired of seeing the spades rise and fall out of sight in that mass of flesh, so I turned away. Unfortunately Mr. Baker chanced to see me, and suggested, in unnecessarily vigorous language, that if I had nothing else to do I had better turn the grindstone. I thought it best to humor him, so I went over to that device of the devil, and found Black Tony sharpening spades and Black Man’el turning for him.

Man’el looked up. “What you want, little Tim?” he asked, grinning.

“Mr. Baker told me to turn the grindstone,” I answered.

“Aw, you go ’way f’om here,” said Man’el, his grin widening. “I turn for Tony. You could n’t turn well enough. Nice place over there,” he went on, nodding his head sidewise toward the port rail. “Mr. Baker won’t see you.”

He looked up at Tony, who nodded in confirmation, and I found an inconspicuous place against the rail, on the side away from the cutting. Here I stood, and looked out over a gentle sea. The sun was high, and it was pleasantly warm, and the oily smell from the cutting-in was not disagreeable, although I was to leeward and got it all. The sounds of the men pumping at the windlass, and the mates on the cutting-stage, and the noise of an occasionally shouted order, sounded more and more faintly in my ears until they ceased to carry their message to my brain. I heard only the screams of the seabirds wheeling above me, and I saw a glittering sea which danced before my half-closed eyes.

How long I remained in this hypnotic state, between sleeping and waking, I do not know; but I was suddenly aroused by a shout, and turned, to see what seemed to be a blackfish come sliding across the deck, straight at me. It was the small. The explanation is simple, although I did not know it at the time. As they approach the small in unrolling the blanket piece, it comes harder and harder, for the forward end of the carcass has no support except the strip of blubber to which the hook of the cutting-falls is fast, and the raw, red shoulders hang low in the water, so that it is hard to turn them over. When the small is reached, therefore, the carcass is cut clean through, and the forward end sent adrift, accompanied by the shoal of silent sharks and the swarming seabirds. The flukes are then cut off, and the small hoisted bodily in upon deck.

My only thought, if I had a thought, was to get out of the way of this slippery black monster. I jumped away from my place, which seemed to be its destined resting-place, the next jump being as far into the future as I had time to look. The deck was now a perilous place to make your way about on, lumbered up as it was with the jaw and the junk, and the last blanket piece of blubber, which lay pretty well across it, beside the open hatch; and it was covered with oil, as was the gangway and the rail near it. I had no time to consider or to measure chances. I went skipping lightly from floe to floe, like Eliza fleeing from the bloodhounds; and I stepped upon the piece of blubber innocently lying there, meaning to spring across the hatch. It looked firm, and there was nowhere else to step without running into something, and I was on my way and I could not stop. It did not look so very slippery. But it was slippery, and it was not firm; and my foot slipped, and the piece of blubber tipped just enough to shoot me down the open hatch.

As I went down, I caught a glimpse of an astonished brown face, in the com­par­a­tive darkness of the blubber room, gazing with mouth hanging open, and wide eyes. Then I landed, sitting down, on the other pieces of blubber, which the owner of the brown face had been stowing. I struggled about there in the half darkness for some time before I could get upon my feet. I had no help from the Kanaka Tom. I thought he would have a fit. He fairly shrieked with laughter until he could not stand, to say nothing of helping me. The pieces of blubber slipped about and threw me again and again, and when I finally managed to get up, I seemed to have been swimming in oil. My clothes were soaked with it. I had managed to keep my face and hair out of it, but that was about all.

I heard great shouts of laughter from the deck, but I did not mind, for it was funny. It would have been funnier for them if they could all have seen me wrestling with the blubber. I found myself grinning as soon as I had got over the immediate effects of my struggle. I grinned at the helpless Tom. My clothes were not uncomfortable, but they were hopelessly spoiled for any other use than an oily one.

When I got on deck again—I took good care to be aft of the hatch, and stood under the gallows by the mainmast—they were shifting the case forward, so that it should be near the gangway. A whip was already rigged at the main yardarm, which was braced forward. Every few seconds one of the crew caught sight of me standing there in my oily clothes, and he whooped and shouted with laughter. I was not sensitive about such things, and I grinned in return. The Admiral and Black Man’el were the most affected by the sight of me, the Admiral letting out such a whoop as would have scared away all the whales within ten miles. Even Black Tony, who rarely smiled and never laughed, but was always dignified and as stiff and straight as a poker, could not help smiling.

Black Tony should have been an officer of the high command in some army. He looked the part, lean, straight, and tall, dignified always, and silent and reserved, the only thing out of keeping being his thin gold earrings, and perhaps his color. I think all the other men looked up to him, even the mates, in a way; but he was not even a boatsteerer. Certainly few attempts were made to play upon him any of the rough jokes of sailors. I remember once, when we were on the Western grounds, which are to the westward of the Azores, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, some poor fool did try a practical joke on him.

The case was now at the gangway, and there was no more chance for shouts of merriment on the part of the crew, for they were again at the windlass, swaying up on the cutting-tackles, which had been hooked on to the case. They could do very little with it, however, no matter how hard they pumped. The ship heeled over toward it, and there it stuck, and there it was secured, the upper, open end about on a level with the deck.

The case-bucket was then made fast to the line running through the block at the yardarm. The case-bucket looks not unlike an old-fashioned fire-bucket with a bulging bottom, except that old fire-buckets were made of leather, and the case-bucket was of wood, bound about with as many hoops as the old oaken bucket. Wright took his place at the gangway, with a wooden pole in his hands nearly twenty feet long. With this pole he pushed the bucket down, and a bucketful of the mushy contents of the case, consisting of oil and shreds of half-solidified spermaceti, plopped into it. It was then drawn up by men on the other end of the line, and emptied into a butt. As many men as could get at the open end of the well of oil were bailing with anything they could lay their hands to, the long-handled copper dippers for dipping oil out of the try-pots, buckets, tin pails without long handles. When the level of oil was lowered, the dippers without long handles became useless, of course, but the copper dippers could be used for some time. When these came up nearly empty the case-bucket worked alone.

At last the long pole in Wright’s hands had been pushed down for nearly its whole length, to the bottom of the well and the case-bucket would bring up no more oil. There was still some at the bottom of the well, however, and Black Man’el, stripped to a ragged old pair of overalls, went down with the bucket. He disappeared in the black cavern. We could see nothing of him, but the bucket made more than one trip before it brought him up again. He was a sight to see, dripping oil everywhere, his tightly curling hair full of it and of soft, silky shreds of spermaceti. I laughed at him, saying that it was my turn to laugh; but he only showed all his white teeth, replying that he liked it, and that the oil kept him warm and “soopled” him, and recommending it to me. I could understand that it might be pleasant to bathe in oil, in case-oil, for it had an agreeable smell, faintly like that of milk as it foams in the buckets; but I could not have stood getting my hair full of it.