Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Nippers

While not indigenous to the whale’s vocabulary, the term nippers becomes native when applied by whalemen. A whaleman’s nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan’s tail, averaging an inch in thickness and roughly the size of the iron part of a hoe. When moved edgewise along the oily deck, it operates like a leathern squeegee, using nameless blandishments like magic to allure along with it all impurities.

Blubber-Room

The blubber-room serves as the receptacle for blanket-pieces stripped and hoisted from the whale. When the time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment becomes a scene of terror for novices, especially by night. A space is cleared and lit by a dull lantern for the workmen, who generally go in pairs—a pike-and-gaffman and a spade-man. The gaffman uses a hook to hold sheets of blubber from slipping as the ship pitches, while the spade-man stands barefoot on the blubber itself, perpendicularly chopping it into portable horse-pieces. The spade is razor-sharp, and the footing precarious; toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men, as they sometimes cut off their own or their assistants’ toes when the material slides away like a sledge.

第九十五章 The Cassock.

This chapter of Moby Dick focuses on the mincer, a specialized sailor aboard the Pequod, his distinctive protective garment crafted from whale anatomy, the process of mincing whale blubber for oil extraction, and the specific workplace instructions governing his role.

The Enigmatic Cone

A strange, enigmatic cone-shaped object lying in the Pequod’s lee scuppers near the windlass is noted as more surprising than the whale’s famous anatomical features. The cone is longer than a tall Kentuckian, nearly a foot in diameter at its base, and jet-black, compared to Queequeg’s ebony idol Yojo, and likened to the idol of Queen Maachah of Judea destroyed by her son King Asa as recorded in the First Book of Kings.