A piece of cold minced blubber—bible-leaves—was put into the second pot to hold it back while the first was emptied. A great square copper tank stood beside the try-works, the cooling-tank already mentioned. Although I never measured our tank, I should think it was about three feet wide by four feet long, and stood nearly five feet high. With the long-handled copper dippers the hot oil was ladled from the try-pot into this tank, which held a good deal of oil. Here the oil cooled a little, and some of the stuff, which the skimmers had not taken out, settled toward the bottom. From the side of the tank, near the top, projected an overflow spout, with a fine strainer back of it, and under the spout was kept one of those huge iron pots on short legs. The try-pot which had been emptied was now recharged with fresh minced blubber, and the operation was being repeated. The contents of the second pot were soon ready, and were ladled into the tank, and that try-pot recharged with fresh minced blubber. So it went on: horse-pieces, mincers, try-pots and tank. I know well that all the men {98} concerned in the process were tired enough of it before they got through, if they thought about it at all. Perhaps they did not think, and merely did it as part of the day’s work; or, at best, took pride in their individual skill in the part of the process assigned to each. I got very simply tired of the monotony of it, and nauseated with the smell of the burning scraps. It was impossible to get away from that smell without jumping overboard, and I was not yet ready for that. The thick, oily black smoke rose in a column from the two copper stacks, and drifted off in the darkness to leeward; and the men under the shadow of the roof were occasionally bathed in a ruddy light, as they wielded their forks or their skimmers or their copper dippers. I watched the smooth stream of oil run smoking from the overflow spout with each dipperful that was ladled into the tank, while the level of the oil in the huge iron pot got higher and higher. I had had enough of watching it. We had caught one whale, had tried out less than a third of the oil, and there was blubber everywhere, and I was tired of it already. How many whales would it take to fill us up? Perhaps forty. Perhaps fifty or more if we were able to send home any of our oil. The thought of it staggered me, and I turned away.