.. < chapter lxvi 2  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

.. <p 301 >

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.

.. <p 301n. >

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.

.. <p 301 >