CHAPTER 95
The Cassock
Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of thispost-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nighthe windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with nosmall curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you wouldhave seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers.Not the wondrous cistern in the whale's huge head; not the prodigyof his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail;none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse ofthat 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 idolas 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 abominationat the brook Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapterof 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 itas if he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field.Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindricallyto 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-holesat the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it.The mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicalsof his calling. Immemorial to all his order, this investiturealone will adequately protect him, while employed in the peculiarfunctions of his office.
That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubberfor the pots; an operation which is conducted at a curiouswooden horse, planted endwise against the bulwarks,and with a capacious tub beneath it, into which the mincedpieces 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 archbishopric,what a lad for a Pope were this mincer!*
* Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cryfrom the mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful,and cut his work into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as byso doing the business of boiling out the oil is much accelerated,and its quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps improvingit in quality.