Squilgee

After the holy-stone, comes the squill-gee; a wooden instrument like a hoe, but with a face, broad and flat, and lined with leather: the decks are partly dried with it; and the operation is completed by the swabs, articles formed by tying a number of loose yarns together, now dashed, by their handles, with violence about the deck.

A whaleman's nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan's tail: […] Edgewise moved along the oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities.