CHAPTER 78: Cistern and Buckets
A block is a pulley, so I assume that a "single-sheaved block" is a pulley that takes a single rope through/around it.
Melville describes him as seeming like "some Turkish Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower." One wonders now why he chose "Turkish" rather than "Arabian" or some other ethnic description, but in Melville's time all of that area was part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by Constantinople (Turkey).
A twin reciprocating bucket would be a device where when one [full] bucket is pulled up, the other [empty] one is lowered. The mechanism could, for example, involved interlocking gears on two axles, one for each bucket, with the ropes wound such that lowering one raises the other.
"[T]he enormous mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool": Table-Rock was a shelf of rock attached to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. It first appeared in the 18th century, and was used a tourist look-out point. In 1818, a piece of the rock fell off, as well as in 1828 and 2829. In July 1850, just as Melville was writing Moby-Dick, a third of it fell off. After further collapses in 1853, 1876, and 1897, the rest was blasted away in 1935.
A boarding-sword is probably what we envision as a pirate sword--a curved single-edged sword about two feet long.
"Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;--he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in the good old way--head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected. And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing." Except for the cutting, this is a classic description of how a midwife delivers a breech birth.
"Pperadventure" is an archaic word meaning "perhaps".
"We thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in an element of a far greater specific gravity than itself." Melville's explanation is that the spermaceti is the lightest part, so when that is removed it will sink. However, the spermaceti has been replaced by air, so the head is even lighter. (Consider a pot partially filled with water, floating on water. If you remove the water--the lightest part--the pot does not sink; if anything, it rides higher.)
"Sanctum sanctorum" is Latin for "Holy of Holies".
The Ohio honey-hunter is a reference to men who were intentionally embalmed in honey. Mellified men were considered medicinal in ancient Chinese pharmacology; they reportedly would begin the process even before death by adopting a diet consisting of only honey. Others, such as the Emperor Justinian and (possibly) Alexander the Great, were embalmed in honey, combined with myrrh and other ingredients.
According to legend, when Plato was a baby, a swarm of bees built a honeycomb in his mouth, hence his "honey head." Melville also talked about believing in Ralph Waldo Emerson's Idealism as "falling into Plato's honey-head."
