While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated ere going to the try-works, of which anon.It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with
several others, I sat down before a large Constantine’s bath of it, I
found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in
the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into
fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times sperm was
such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a
softener; such a delicious mollifier! After having my hands in it for
only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to
serpentine and spiralize.As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter
exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under
indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among
those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, wove almost within
the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their
opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as. I snuffed up that
uncontaminated aroma,- literally and truly, like the smell of spring
violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky
meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible
sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit
the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying
the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free
from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
After @timothy_krause, quoting Melville.
