Mr. Tilton stood at the gangway with a boarding-knife in his hands, and took the attitude of a man about to take part in a bayonet charge. That was virtually what he did. The boarding-knife is a sword-like blade, nearly straight, thirty inches long, and it is fixed in the end of a stout wooden handle, about three feet long. With this formidable weapon Mr. Tilton made violent lunges and plunges at the strip of blubber just above the break of the gangway, and soon had a hole through it. Through this hole {81} an “eye-strop”—a loop of heavy rope, through one end of which the blubber-hook passes—was passed, and its oak toggle pounded into place on the other side and lashed, to make its hold on the blubber secure. Meanwhile the fall of the first tackle had been secured and the strain put on the second tackle. There are two drums on the windlass, and one fall leads to each drum. The man with the boarding-knife again attacked the strip of blubber, this time a little above the hole, and by a series of stabs and slashes he cut it across, and the upper piece swung in over the open hatch, and was lowered to the blubber room, where it was stowed, the outside—“black skin,” as it is called—down. This proceeding surprised me, for I had supposed, without giving the matter any thought, that it would be dumped upon the deck and cut up there. I did not know what a mountain of blubber it would make, and the deck well cluttered up with the jaw and the junk and the small, as you will see. One or two of the last strips of blubber they did dump there. My surprise, I found, was justified somewhat. No more blubber is put between decks than is necessary to provide working space on deck. A big whale can be tried out in thirty-six hours, and it would only mean hoisting out almost immediately. But in this case there was a threat of rain, and rain spoils blubber. The cutting-in proceeded rapidly. Mr. Wallet and Mr. Brown were engaged upon various dissections of the head at the same time that the blanket piece was being stripped off, and from time to time there were interruptions in the regular progress of the blanket pieces to enable them to finish certain stages of the operation in the order that has been found to be proper. It is necessary that the head should be dissected into its parts and cut off before the stripping of the blanket pieces has gone very far. This is the most important operation in cutting-in, as the head of the sperm whale contains the most valuable of his products. {82} CHAPTER IX