derous knees of iron bracing it on all
sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased
with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping, battened
hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in
number, and each of several barrels' capacity. When not in use, they are
kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with soapstone
and sand, till they shine within like silver punch-bowls. During the
night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil
themselves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them--one
man in each pot, side by side--many confidential communications
are carried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound
mathematical meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Pequod,
with the soapstone diligently circling round me, that I was first
indirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies
gliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for example, will descend from
any point in precisely the same time.

Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare
masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of
the furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted
with heavy doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented
from communicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir
extending under the entire inclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel
inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept replenished with water as
fast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys; they open direct
from the rear wall. And here let us go back for a moment.

It was about nine o'clock at night that the Pequod's try-works were
first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee
the business.

"All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the
works." This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting his
shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it said that
in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a
time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick
ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the
crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains
considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames.
Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once
ignited