were matters of great
interest to me the first time I saw them.

After having towed our whale to the ship, cutting in was immediately
begun. First, the carcass was secured near the head and tail with
chains, and made fast to the ship; then the great blocks and ropes
fastened to the main and fore mast for hoisting in the blubber were
brought into play. When all was ready, the captain and the two mates
with Tom Lokins got upon the whale's body, with long-handled sharp
spades or digging-knives. With these they fell to work cutting off the
blubber.

I was stationed at one of the hoisting ropes, and while we were waiting
for the signal to "hoist away", I peeped over the side, and for the
first time had a good look at the great fish. When we killed it, so
much of its body was down in the water that I could not see it very
clearly, but now that it was lashed at full length alongside the ship,
and I could look right down upon it, I began to understand more clearly
what a large creature it was. One thing surprised me much; the top of
its head, which was rough and knotty like the bark of an old tree, was
swarming with little crabs and barnacles, and other small creatures.
The whale's head seemed to be their regular home! This fish was by no
means one of the largest kind, but being the first I had seen, I
fancied it must be the largest fish in the sea.

Its body was forty feet long, and twenty feet round at the thickest
part. Its head, which seemed to me a great, blunt, shapeless thing,
like a clumsy old boat, was eight feet long from the tip to the
blowholes or nostrils; and these holes were situated on the back of the
head, which at that part was nearly four feet broad. The entire head
measured about twenty-one feet round. Its ears were two small holes,
so small that it was difficult to discover them, and the eyes were also
very small for so large a body, being about the same size as those of
an ox. The mouth was very large, and the under jaw had great ugly
lips. When it was dying, I saw these lips close in once or twice on
its fat cheeks, which it bulged out like the leather sides of a pair of
gigantic bellows. It had two fins, one on each side, just behind the
head. With these, and with its tail, the whale swims and fights. Its
tail is its most deadly weapon. The flukes of this one measured
thirteen feet across, and with one stroke of this it could have smashed
our largest boat in pieces. Many a boat has be