- Project Runeberg -  Through Norway with Ladies /
131

(1877) [MARC] Author: W. Mattieu Williams
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might be mistaken for one, but for a curious flat
angular peak that stands above the water a few
yards beyond. This is one lobe of the dead
creature’s tail. The island is his back. His head,
with huge open mouth, which appears large
enough to swallow himself,[1] is lying deep under
water. The nose-cable is already attached to a
windlass on shore, fixed at the top of a sloping
wooden landing-place or whale pier. On this
huge slab the remains of the whale that came in
last midnight are still lying—a loathsome mountain
of pinkish beefy flesh, into the midst of which half
a dozen of hideously blood-stained men are
chopping and hacking with great hatchets and
long-handled, big-bladed weapons, like inverted scythes
or large bill-hooks. Some are peeling off the
blubber that surrounds the whole carcass, and
serves, during the life of the animal, to protect
its warm blood from the deadly chilling of the
Arctic water. Others are hacking at the already
peeled portion of the flesh mountain, and thus
detaching great slabs that slide down the sloping
whale-pier into the sea, to float and stink until


[1] This paradox is not so impossible as may appear. Some fishes
have mouths quite large enough to include themselves. I have proved
this by taking two John-Dorys of equal size and putting each into the
mouth of the other. Please to note my exact words. I say “each” not
both into the mouth of the other, i. e. the two operations were separately performed.

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