Sabbath Breaking and the Work of Butchery
Chapter 67 of Moby-Dick opens on a Saturday night aboard the Pequod, with 's narrator, Ishmael, noting that all whalemen are "ex officio professors of Sabbath breaking." The ivory Pequod has been transformed into what seems like a slaughterhouse, every sailor turned butcher, as if the crew were offering up "ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods." This grim opening establishes the chapter's tone: a detailed, almost clinical account of one of the most physically demanding and dangerous stages in the whaling process, known as "cutting in."
Rigging the Cutting Tackles
Ishmael describes the enormous cutting tackles that must be hoisted into position before the work can begin. A massive cluster of blocks, generally painted green and too heavy for any single man to lift, is swayed up to the main-top and lashed to the lower mast-head, the strongest point above the ship's deck. A hawser-like rope threads through these intricacies, leading down to the windlass on deck. The huge lower block of the tackle is swung out over the whale's body, and from it hangs the great blubber hook, weighing approximately one hundred pounds. Starbuck and Stubb, the first and second mates, are suspended over the side on stages, armed with long-handled spades to begin the cutting.
Stripping the Blubber Like an Orange
The mates cut a hole in the whale's body just above one of its side-fins and insert the blubber hook. A broad semicircular incision is made, and the entire crew begins heaving at the windlass while singing a wild chorus. The strain is immense: the Pequod careens over on her side, every bolt starts, and the mast-heads tremble and nod. Finally, with a swift snap, the ship rolls upward and backward, and the first strip of blubber rises into sight. Ishmael compares the process to peeling an orange in a continuous spiral. The whale rolls over and over in the water as the blubber peels off along a line called the "scarf," simultaneously cut by the spades of the two mates, until the strip reaches all the way up to the main-top.
The Blanket-Piece and the Blubber-Room
When the first strip is fully hoisted, one of the harpooneers steps forward with a boarding-sword and slices a hole in its lower part so a second tackle can hook on. He then severs the strip completely, creating what is called a "blanket-piece." This upper section swings clear and is lowered through the main hatchway into the blubber-room below, a dim space where crewmen coil the long blanket-piece like "a great live mass of plaited serpents." The two tackles work simultaneously, one hoisting a new strip while the other lowers the completed one, and the chapter closes with a vivid catalog of simultaneous action: whale and windlass heaving, heavers singing, blubber-room gentlemen coiling, mates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands "swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the general friction."