Page:The Catalpa Expedition (1897).djvu/106

84 The whale was taken alongside. At 5.30 the work of cutting commenced and it was finished at eight in the evening. The great pieces of blubber are hauled over the main hatch and minced into fine pieces, called "horse pieces." Then the boiling commences. Water is turned into caboose pens, or jogs along the deck, to prevent the woodwork catching fire from the try works. The casks containing provisions, towlines, and sails are emptied, cleansed, and swabbed clean. The hot oil is then poured in and the casks are lashed to the rail on the ship's side to cool before being stored below.

This whale was a very small one and made but about twenty barrels of oil. It may not be uninteresting to give the reader some idea of the size of the right whale, which is the largest of whales. Captain Davis, a veteran whaleman, has made a comparison of the various parts with familiar objects, which is here quoted: "The blubber, or blanket, of a large right whale would carpet a room twenty-two yards long and nine yards wide, averaging half a yard in thickness. Set up a saw-log two feet in diameter and twenty feet in length for the ridgepole of the room we propose to build; then raise it in the air fifteen feet, and support it with pieces of timber seventeen feet long, spread, say, nine feet. This will make a room nine feet wide at the bottom, two feet wide at the peak, and twenty feet long, and will convey an idea of the upper jaw, the saw-log and slanting supports representing the bone. These walls of bone are clasped by the white blubbery