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Table of Contents
Chapter 66
THE SHARK
MASSACRE
When in the Southern
Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and weary toil, is brought
alongside late at night, it is not, as a general thing at least, customary to
proceed at once to the business of cutting him in. For that business is an
exceedingly laborious one; is not very soon completed; and requires all hands
to set about it. Therefore, the common usage is to take in all sail; lash the
helm a'lee; and then send every one below to his hammock till daylight, with
the reservation that, until that time, anchor-watches shall be kept; that is,
two and two for an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation shall mount the
deck to see that all goes well. But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the
Pacific, this plan will not answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of
sharks gather round the moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours,
say, on a stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning.
In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so largely
abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably diminished, by
vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades, a procedure
notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to tickle them into
still greater activity. But it was not thus in the present case with the
Pequod's sharks; though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such sights, to
have looked over her side that night, would have almost thought the whole
round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.
nevertheless, upon stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was
concluded; and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on
deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately
suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so
that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these ..
2 two mariners, darting
their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks, by
striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital
part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the
marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought about new
revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not
only at each other's disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and
bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the
same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It
was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of
generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones,
after what might be called the individual life had departed. Killed and
hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor
Queequeg's hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous
jaw. Queequeg no care what god made him shark, said the savage, agonizingly
lifting his hand up and down; wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god
wat made shark must be one dam Ingin. ..
3 The whaling-spade
used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel; is about the bigness of a
man's spread hand; and in general shape, corresponds to the garden implement
after which it is named; only its sides are perfectly flat, and its upper end
considerably narrower than the lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as
possible; and when being used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its
socket, a stiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a
handle. ..
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