When the boat reached the bowhead, he was nearly dead, and it was an easy matter to despatch him and tow him to the ship. The cutting-in and trying-out were nearly the same as in the case of the sperm whale. The only difference was in handling the head. The great strips of bone were cut out, hoisted on deck, carefully cleaned and stowed away. When the carcass was set adrift, there were no ravenous sharks or noisy birds to be seen; and I thought how much more fitting it would have been, if the great creature had met death in a battle with man rather than fall an ignoble prey to the assaults of what are called the “wolves of the sea.”
Epicures prefer fish just out of the water. I wonder what they would say of meat just out of the water. There is nothing to show that the meat of sperm whales was ever served to the men, but that of the bowhead was a common article of food. Of this I was ignorant until Kreelman told me and he added, “We’ll have somethin’ for supper that’ll make your mouth water. Generally the cabin gets the best, the steerage next and the forecastle the scrapings. But the poor old bowhead has so much meat that all will be treated alike.”
I had a chat with my old friend, the cook. He told me that the best cuts come from alongside the backbone or the afterpart of the whale, that the flesh looks more like beef liver smeared with blood than any other kind of meat, and that the usual method of cooking the flesh is in meat balls, although stews and steaks are very good. The cook went to the place where the chunks were suspended under the boathouse and came back with one.
The cook put the meat through a sausage machine, spiced it with sage, savory and pepper, mixed in a little chopped pork, then made it up into balls and fried it. Most of us of the forecastle had never tasted bowhead meat before, but we were loud in our praise of the meat balls. The flavor was rather peculiar, and one of the men, who had seen a good deal of the world, said that they tasted to him a little like venison.
“Me don’t know nothin’ ’bout Benny’s son,” observed Ohoo. “But me no care no more ’bout lobscouse and hard bread; me eat blawhead all time.”
I have described a right whale feeding on brit. More than once it was our fortune to see a big bowhead devour his dinner. The food in the North Atlantic and Arctic is called “slicks”, which give the water the appearance of oily streaks. They are produced by different kinds of jellyfish and range in size from a pea to six inches or more in diameter. When the bowhead is feeding the spread of the lips is about thirty feet. Turning on his side, he will take a course fifteen feet wide and a quarter of a mile long, scooping just under the surface where the slicks are most abundant. The water passes through the whalebone and packs the slicks upon the hair sieve. The bowhead raises the lower jaw and, still keeping the lips apart, forces the tongue into the cavity of the sieve, expelling the water through the spaces between the bone. Then the bowhead closes his lips to enjoy his meal.