He looked up at Tony, who nodded in confirmation, and I found an inconspicuous place against the rail, on the side away from the cutting. Here I stood, and looked out over a gentle sea. The sun was high, and it was pleasantly warm, and the oily smell from the cutting-in was not {85} disagreeable, although I was to leeward and got it all. The sounds of the men pumping at the windlass, and the mates on the cutting-stage, and the noise of an occasionally shouted order, sounded more and more faintly in my ears until they ceased to carry their message to my brain. I heard only the screams of the seabirds wheeling above me, and I saw a glittering sea which danced before my half-closed eyes. How long I remained in this hypnotic state, between sleeping and waking, I do not know; but I was suddenly aroused by a shout, and turned, to see what seemed to be a blackfish come sliding across the deck, straight at me. It was the small. The explanation is simple, although I did not know it at the time. As they approach the small in unrolling the blanket piece, it comes harder and harder, for the forward end of the carcass has no support except the strip of blubber to which the hook of the cutting-falls is fast, and the raw, red shoulders hang low in the water, so that it is hard to turn them over. When the small is reached, therefore, the carcass is cut clean through, and the forward end sent adrift, accompanied by the shoal of silent sharks and the swarming seabirds. The flukes are then cut off, and the small hoisted bodily in upon deck. My only thought, if I had a thought, was to get out of the way of this slippery black monster. I jumped away from my place, which seemed to be its destined resting-place, the next jump being as far into the future as I had time to look. The deck was now a perilous place to make your way about on, lumbered up as it was with the jaw and the junk, and the last blanket piece of blubber, which lay pretty well across it, beside the open hatch; and it was covered with oil, as was the gangway and the rail near it. I had no time to consider or to measure chances. I went skipping lightly from floe to floe, like Eliza fleeing from the bloodhounds; and I stepped upon the piece of blubber innocently lying there, meaning to spring across {86} the hatch. It looked firm, and there was nowhere else to step without running into something, and I was on my way and I could not stop. It did not look so very slippery. But it was slippery, and it was not firm; and my foot slipped, and the piece of blubber tipped just enough to shoot me down the open hatch.