Cistern and Buckets — Moby-Dick

Tashtego climbs up the rigging as quick as a cat. He runs out on the yard-arm above the hoisted whale head. He uses a whip tackle to lower himself onto the top of the head. From up there he looks like a man calling prayers from a tower.

He carefully picks the spot to break into the oil tank, the Case. The crew sends up a sharp spade and an iron well-bucket on a rope. Tashtego guides the bucket into the tun with a long pole. The men pull it up full of bubbling sperm oil, like fresh milk. They pour it into tubs. He keeps going until the pole must reach twenty feet down to get the last oil.

Then something terrible happens. At about the eightieth or ninetieth bucket, Tashtego falls headfirst into the great tun and disappears with a horrible oily gurgle. Daggoo shouts man overboard. He rides the bucket back up to the head. The whale head throbs in the water below, showing how deep Tashtego has sunk.

While Daggoo clears a tangled rope, one of the huge hooks holding the head tears out. The massive head swings sideways. The ship reels like it hit an iceberg. Stubb yells that ramming a bucket down will not help. Someone shouts stand clear of the tackle. The head crashes into the sea with a thunder-boom, like a rock falling into a whirlpool.

Daggoo clings to the swinging ropes above the spray. Tashtego is buried alive inside the sinking head. Queequeg dives in with his boarding sword. He cuts a hole in the head underwater. He pushes back a leg that was not the right way out. He flips Tashtego around and pulls him out head-first. Both men are brought aboard, tired and shaken.

Ishmael explains why the head sank slowly enough for rescue. The Case was nearly empty, but its thick walls are heavy. The rest of the head still attached slowed the fall. He jokes that midwifery should be taught with fencing and rowing. He also imagines dying sweetly buried in sperm oil or lost in Plato's honey head.