The Cruise of the Cachalot | Page 9

endeavour was undoubtedly made
to instruct them in their duties, albeit the teachers were all too apt to
beat their information in with anything that came to hand, and
persuasion found no place in their methods.
The reports I had always heard of the laziness prevailing on board
whale-ships were now abundantly falsified. From dawn to dark work
went on without cessation. Everything was rubbed and scrubbed and
scoured until no speck or soil could be found; indeed, no gentleman's
yacht or man-of-war is kept more spotlessly clean than was the
CACHALOT.
A regular and severe routine of labour was kept up; and, what was most
galling to me, instead of a regular four hours' watch on and off, night
and day, all hands were kept on deck the whole day long, doing quite
unnecessary tasks, apparently with the object of preventing too much
leisure and consequent brooding over their unhappy lot. One result of
this continual drive and tear was that all these landsmen became rapidly
imbued with the virtues of cleanliness, which was extended to the den
in which we lived, or I verily believe sickness would have soon thinned
us out.
On the fourth day after leaving port we were all busy as usual except
the four men in the "crow's-nests," when a sudden cry of "Porps!
porps!" brought everything to a standstill. A large school of porpoises
had just joined us, in their usual clownish fashion, rolling and tumbling
around the bows as the old barky wallowed along, surrounded by a
wide ellipse of snowy foam. All work was instantly suspended, and
active preparations made for securing a few of these frolicsome fellows.
A "block," or pulley, was hung out at the bowsprit end, a whale-line
passed through it and "bent" (fastened) on to a harpoon. Another line
with a running "bowline," or slip-noose, was also passed out to the
bowsprit end, being held there by one man in readiness. Then one of
the harpooners ran out along the backropes, which keep the jib-boom
down, taking his stand beneath the bowsprit with the harpoon ready.
Presently he raised his iron and followed the track of a rising porpoise

with its point until the creature broke water. At the same instant the
weapon left his grasp, apparently without any force behind it; but we
on deck, holding the line, soon found that our excited hauling lifted a
big vibrating body clean out of the smother beneath. "'Vast hauling!"
shouted the mate, while as the porpoise hung dangling, the harpooner
slipped the ready bowline over his body, gently closing its grip round
the "small" by the broad tail. Then we hauled on the noose-line,
slacking away the harpoon, and in a minute had our prize on deck. He
was dragged away at once and the operation repeated. Again and again
we hauled them in, until the fore part of the deck was alive with the
kicking, writhing sea-pigs, at least twenty of them. I had seen an
occasional porpoise caught at sea before, but never more than one at a
time. Here, however, was a wholesale catch. At last one of the
harpooned ones plunged so furiously while being hauled up that he
literally tore himself off the iron, falling, streaming with blood, back
into the sea.
Away went all the school after him, tearing at him with their long
well-toothed jaws, some of them leaping high in the air in their
eagerness to get their due share of the cannibal feast. Our fishing was
over for that time. Meanwhile one of the harpooners had brought out a
number of knives, with which all hands were soon busy skinning the
blubber from the bodies. Porpoises have no skin, that is hide, the
blubber or coating of lard which encases them being covered by a black
substance as thin as tissue paper. The porpoise hide of the boot maker
is really leather, made from the skin of the BELUGA, or "white whale,"
which is found only in the far north. The cover was removed from the
"tryworks" amidships, revealing two gigantic pots set in a frame of
brickwork side by side, capable of holding 200 gallons each. Such a
cooking apparatus as might have graced a Brobdingnagian kitchen.
Beneath the pots was the very simplest of furnaces, hardly as elaborate
as the familiar copper-hole sacred to washing day. Square funnels of
sheet-iron were loosely fitted to the flues, more as a protection against
the oil boiling over into the fire than to carry away the smoke, of which
from the peculiar nature of the fuel there was very little. At one side of
the try-works was a large wooden vessel, or "hopper," to contain the
raw blubber; at the other, a copper cistern or cooler of about 300

gallons capacity, into