In the southern whaling grounds, crews rarely start cutting up a newly caught sperm whale late at night.
Hauling apart a whale is exhausting, grueling work. It takes ages to finish, and it needs every single crew member on deck.
So the standard routine is simple.
Sailors take down all the sails, lock the ship’s wheel hard to the leeward side, and send everyone down to their hammocks to sleep until dawn.
The only exception is the anchor watch. Two men at a time take hourly turns on deck, keeping an eye on the ship to make sure nothing goes wrong through the night.
But this rule doesn’t always hold true—especially on the open Pacific equator.
Massive swarms of sharks gather around a tethered whale carcass here.
Leave the body unattended for just six hours, and by morning barely anything will be left except a bare skeleton.
In most other ocean waters, shark numbers are far smaller.
Crews can usually drive them off and slow their frantic feeding by jabbing at them with sharp whaling spades.
Sometimes, though, the sharp prods only excite the sharks more, making them thrash and bite harder.
Nothing could stop the sharks swarming around the Pequod’s whale that night.
Anyone unused to the sight would have sworn the entire sea was a giant wheel of rotten cheese, with these sharks wriggling over it like maggots.
Once Stubb finished his supper, he set the night’s anchor watch.
Queequeg and another foredeck sailor climbed up to take their shift.
Their arrival stirred the already chaotic shark swarm into a total frenzy.
The two men lowered the whale-cutting staging over the ship’s side and hung three lanterns above the murky water.
The light streaked across the dark waves, illuminating the endless mass of sharks below.
Armed with long, sharp whaling spades, they began stabbing relentlessly into the sharks.
They aimed straight for the sharks’ skulls—the only spot that could kill them quickly.
But the water churned with thrashing bodies and foamy waves.
It was impossible to land a perfect shot every time.
What happened next revealed just how vicious these sea creatures truly were.
The sharks snapped wildly, tearing into the open guts of their wounded kin without hesitation.
They twisted their bodies like flexible bows, bending around to bite their own flesh too.
Some sharks swallowed their own spilling entrails, only for the guts to spill right back out of their gaping wounds.
Worse still, the sharks seemed to hold onto a strange, lingering life even after death.
Something like a hidden, universal vitality lingered in their bones and joints long after their individual lives were gone.
Crews pulled one dead shark onto the deck to skin it.
When Queequeg reached down to close its deadly jaws, the supposedly dead shark nearly bit his hand clean off.
Note on the whaling spade: The tools used for cutting whale are forged from the finest steel.
They’re about as wide as a fully spread human hand, shaped like a garden spade but completely flat on both sides, narrower at the top and wider at the blade end.
Crews keep these blades razor-sharp, honing them mid-work just like a straight razor.
Each spade is fitted onto a stiff wooden pole twenty to thirty feet long, giving sailors the reach to stab at sharks and cut whale flesh from the deck.
Queequeg shook his injured hand in obvious pain, muttering to himself.
“Queequeg no care what god made him shark,” he groaned.
“Whether Fijian god or Nantucket god. The god that made sharks must be one damn cruel savage.”