This long and elaborate process is quite different from that followed on board the Arctic whaleships, whose voyages are of short duration, and who content themselves with merely cutting the blubber up small and bringing it home to have the oil expressed.But the awful putrid mass discharged from a Greenlander's hold is of very different quality and value, apart from the nature of the substance, to the clear and sweet oil, which after three years in cask is landed from a south-seaman as inoffensive in smell and flavour as the day it was shipped.No attempt is made to separate the oil and spermaceti beyond boiling the "head matter," as it is called, by itself first, and putting it into casks which are not filled up with the body oil.
Spermaceti exists in all the oil, especially that from the dorsal hump; but it is left for the refiners ashore to extract and leave the oil quite free from any admixture of the wax-like substance, which causes it to become solid at temperatures considerably above the freezing-point.
Uninteresting as the preceding description may be, it is impossible to understand anything of the economy of a south-sea whaler without giving it, and I have felt it the more necessary because of the scanty notice given to it in the only two works published on the subject, both of them highly technical, and written for scientific purposes by medical men.Therefore I hope to be forgiven if I have tried the patience of my readers by any prolixity.
It will not, of course, have escaped the reader's notice that Ihave not hitherto attempted to give any details concerning the structure of the whale just dealt with.The omission is intentional.During this, our first attempt at real whaling, my mind was far too disturbed by the novelty and danger of the position in which I found myself for the first time, for me to pay any intelligent attention to the party of the second part.
But I may safely promise that from the workman's point of view, the habits, manners, and build of the whales shall be faithfully described as I saw them during my long acquaintance with them, earnestly hoping that if my story be not as technical or scientific as that of Drs.Bennett and Beale, it may be found fully as accurate and reliable; and perhaps the reader, being like myself a mere layman, so to speak, may be better able to appreciate description free from scientific formula and nine-jointed words.
Two things I did notice on this occasion which I will briefly allude to before closing this chapter.One was the peculiar skin of the whale.It was a bluish-black, and as thin as gold-beater's skin.So thin, indeed, and tender, that it was easily scraped off with the finger-nail.Immediately beneath it, upon the surface of the blubber, was a layer or coating of what for want of a better simile I must call fine short fur, although unlike fur it had no roots or apparently any hold upon the blubber.Neither was it attached to the skin which covered it;in fact, it seemed merely a sort of packing between the skin and the surface of the thick layer of solid fat which covered the whole area of the whale's body.The other matter which impressed me was the peculiarity of the teeth.For up till that time I had held, in common with most seamen, and landsmen, too, for that matter, the prevailing idea that a "whale" lived by "suction"(although I did not at all know what that meant), and that it was impossible for him to swallow a herring.Yet here was a mouth manifestly intended for greater things in the way of gastronomy than herrings; nor did it require more than the most casual glances to satisfy one of so obvious a fact.Then the teeth were heroic in size, protruding some four or five inches from the gum, and solidly set more than that into its firm and compact substance.They were certainly not intended for mastication, being, where thickest, three inches apart, and tapering to a short point, curving slightly backwards.In this specimen, a female, and therefore small as I have said, there were twenty of them on each side, the last three or four near the gullet being barely visible above the gum.
Another most convincing reason why no mastication could have been possible was that there were no teeth visible in the upper jaw.
Opposed to each of the teeth was a socket where a tooth should apparently have been, and this was conclusive evidence of the soft and yielding nature of the great creature's food.But there were signs that at some period of the development of the whale it had possessed a double row of teeth, because at the bottom of these upper sockets we found in a few cases what seemed to be an abortive tooth, not one that was growing, because they had no roots, but a survival of teeth that had once been perfect and useful, but from disuse, or lack of necessity for them, had gradually ceased to come to maturity.The interior of the mouth and throat was of a livid white, and the tongue was quite small for so large an animal.It was almost incapable of movement, being somewhat like a fowl's.Certainly it could not have been protruded even from the angle of the mouth, much less have extended along the parapet of that lower mandible, which reminded one of the beak of some mighty albatross or stork.
