And now suspended in
stages over the side, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their
long spades, began cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of
the hook just above the nearest of the two side-fins. This done, a
broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted,
and the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence
heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the
entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like
the nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather; she trembles,
quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more
she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the
windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at
last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship
rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle
rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of
the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale
precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from the
body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it.
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