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- mystically carved in front, so the whale’s vast plaited forehead forms
innumerable strange devices for the emblematical adornment of his
wondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished
with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so the tun
of the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily
vintages; namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in its absolutely pure,
limpid, and odoriferous state. Nor is this precious substance found
unalloyed in any other part of the creature. Though in life it remains
perfectly fluid, yet, upon exposure to the air, after death, it soon
begins to concrete; sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as when
the first thin delicate ice is just forming in water. A large whale’s
case generally yields about five hundred gallons of sperm, though from
unavoidable circumstances, considerable of it is spilled, leaks, and
dribbles away, or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish
business of securing what you can.
I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun was
coated within, but in superlative richness that coating could not
possibly have compared with the silken pearl-coloured membrane, like
the lining of a fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the Sperm
Whale’s case.
It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale
embraces the entire length of the entire top of the head; and since—as
has been elsewhere set forth—the head embraces one third of the whole
length of the creature, then setting that length down at eighty feet
for a good sized whale, you have more than twenty-six feet for the
depth of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up and down against a
ship’s side.
As in decapitating the whale, the operator’s instrument is brought
close to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the
spermaceti magazine; he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest
a careless, untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly
let out its invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of the
head, also, which is at last elevated out of the water, and retained in
that position by the enormous cutting tackles, whose hempen
combinations, on one side, make quite a wilderness of ropes in that
quarter.
Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous and—in
this particular instance—almost fatal operation whereby the Sperm
Whale’s great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.
CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.
Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect
posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the
part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried
with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts,
travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that
it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it
is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down
the other part, the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he
lands on the summit of the head. There—still high elevated above the
rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously cries—he seems some Turkish
Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A
short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches
for the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business
he proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house,
sounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time
this cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like
a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the
other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or
three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the
Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole.
Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the
bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word
to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like
a dairy-maid’s pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the
full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly
emptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through
the same round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the
end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper
and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet of the pole have gone
down.
Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way;
several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once
a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild
Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his
one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or
whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or
whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without
stating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling
now; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came
suckingly up—my God! poor Tashtego—like the twin reciprocating bucket
in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of
Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of
sight!
“Man overboard!” cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation first
came to his senses. “Swing the bucket this way!” and putting one foot
into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip
itself, the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost
before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, there
was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before
lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea,
as if that moment seized with some momentous idea; whereas it was only
the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous
depth to which he had sunk.
At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clearing
the whip—which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles—a
sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable horror of all,
one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with a
vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk ship
reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one remaining hook,
upon which the entire strain now depended, seemed every instant to be
on the point of giving way; an event still more likely from the violent
motions of the head.
“Come down, come down!” yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one hand
holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop, he
would still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line,
rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that the
buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.
“In heaven’s name, man,” cried Stubb, “are you ramming home a cartridge
there?—Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on
top of his head? Avast, will ye!”
“Stand clear of the tackle!” cried a voice like the bursting of a
rocket.
Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass
dropped into the sea, like Niagara’s Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the
suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering
copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging—now over the
sailors’ heads, and now over the water—Daggoo, through a thick mist of
spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor,
buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the
sea! But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked
figure with a boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen
hovering over the bulwarks.