As we are now ready to “cut in” the whale, we will briefly explain the modus operandi. In the first place the decks are cleared, in order to have room to work. The ponderous cutting tackles are swayed up to the lower-mast head (the main), the strongest point any where above a ship’s deck. Large hawsers are then rove through these blocks, then through similar ones on deck, to the windlass, in the forward part of the ship. To the lower blocks are attached ponderous iron hooks, weighing over one hundred pounds each. These hooks are for the purpose of “hooking on” to the blubber, and can be put on and taken off the blocks at pleasure. And now, suspended in stages over the side, the first and second mates, armed with their long spades, begin cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just above one of the fins. This done, a broad semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted, and the main body of the crew, striking up a wild chorus, now commence heaving at the windlass. The entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like the nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather; she trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mastheads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave of the billows, till at last a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upward and backward from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight, dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now, as the blubber envelops the whale, as we described in the last chapter, precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off the body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. The strain, constantly kept up by the windlass, continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the water; and as the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the line called the “scarf,” simultaneously cut by the spades of the mates—the chief mate separating the head from the body while the whale is being rolled over the first time—and just as fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes the main-top; the men at the windlass then cease heaving, and for a moment or two the prodigious, blood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let down from the sky; and every one present must take good care to dodge it when it swings, else it may box his ears and pitch him overboard.

One of the attending boat-steerers now advances with a long, keen weapon, called a boarding-knife, and, watching his opportunity, he dexterously slices out a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass. Into this hole the end of the second alternating great tackle is hooked, so as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare for what follows. Whereupon this accomplished swordsman, warning all hands to stand off, once more makes a scientific dash at the mass, and with a few sidelong, desperate, lunging slicings, severs it completely in two; so that, while the short lower part is still fast, the long upper strip, the “blanket piece,” swings clear, and is all ready for lowering. The heavers forward now resume their song and their work, 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.” Into this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the long blanket-pieces, as if they were a great live mass of plaited serpents. And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously, both whale and windlass heaving, the crew singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates cutting, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the general friction.

And now the “body” of the whale is all in; the carcass has floated off, food for the sharks; the head, which has been made fast alongside the ship, is brought to the gangway, and the junk is separated from the case, and “hove in” on deck. Now comes the bailing of the case. It is hoisted up alongside the gangway, nearly level with the ship’s deck; a “whip” is rigged, being simply a rope, one end on deck, the other passing through a single block made fast to the main-yard, to which is attached a bucket of the capacity of about a gallon. One of the boat-steerers stands on the end of the case, with a short spade cuts a hole in the case, and the bucket is then sunk into it by means of a long pole, until it is filled, when it is hoisted out and emptied, and so on until the liquid oil is all bailed out. From the case of a hundred-barrel sperm whale from fifteen to seventeen barrels of liquid oil is generally obtained, though a great deal is unavoidably wasted. After the case is bailed it is cut loose, and immediately sinks with great rapidity.