CHAPTER 115
The Pequod Meets The Bachelor
And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing downbefore the wind, some few weeks after Ahab's harpoon had been welded.
It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedgedin her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches;and now, in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhatvain-gloriously, sailing round among the widely-separated shipson the ground, previous to pointing her prow for home.
The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow redbunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended,bottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the longlower jaw of the last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns,and jacks of all colors were flying from her rigging, on every side.Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two barrelsof sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slenderbreakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truckwas a brazen lamp.
As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met withthe most surprising success; all the more wonderful,for that while cruising in the same seas numerous other vesselshad gone entire months without securing a single fish.Not only had barrels of beef and bread been given away to makeroom for the far more valuable sperm, but additional supplementalcasks had been bartered for, from the ships she had met; and thesewere stowed along the deck, and in the captain's and officers'state-rooms. Even the cabin table itself had been knockedinto kindling-wood; and the cabin mess dined off the broad headof an oil-butt, lashed down to the floor for a centrepiece.In the forecastle, the sailors had actually caulked and pitchedtheir chests, and filled them; it was humorously added, that thecook had clapped a head on his largest boiler, and filled it;that the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it;that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their ironsand filled them; that indeed everything was filled with sperm,except the captain's pantaloons pockets, and those he reservedto thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testimony ofhis entire satisfaction.
As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod,the barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle;and drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standinground her huge try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-likepoke or stomach skin of the black fish, gave forth a loudroar to every stroke of the clenched hands of the crew.On the quarter-deck, the mates and harpooneers were dancing with theolive-hued girls who had eloped with them from the Polynesian Isles;while suspended in an ornamented boat, firmly secured aloft betweenthe foremast and mainmast, three Long Island negroes, with glitteringfiddle-bows of whale ivory, were presiding over the hilarious jig.Meanwhile, others of the ship's company were tumultuously busy atthe masonry of the try-works, from which the huge pots had been removed.You would have almost thought they were pulling down the cursed Bastille,such wild cries they raised, as the now useless brick and mortarwere being hurled into the sea.
Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erecton the ship's elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicingdrama was full before him, and seemed merely contrived for hisown individual diversion.
And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and black,with a stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other's wakes--one all jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodingsas to things to come--their two captains in themselves impersonatedthe whole striking contrast of the scene.
"Come aboard, come aboard!" cried the gay Bachelor's commander,lifting a glass and a bottle in the air.
"Hast seen the White Whale?" gritted Ahab in reply.
"No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all,"said the other good-humoredly. "Come aboard!"
"Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?"
"Not enough to speak of--two islanders, that's all;--but come aboard,old hearty, come along. I'll soon take that black from your brow.Come along, will ye (merry's the play); a full ship and homeward-bound."
"How wondrous familiar is a fool!" muttered Ahab; then aloud, "Thou arta full ship and homeward bound, thou sayest; well, then, call mean empty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine.Forward there! Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!"
And thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze,the other stubbornly fought against it; and so the two vessels parted;the crew of the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glancestowards the receding Bachelor; but the Bachelor's men never heedingtheir gaze for the lively revelry they were in. And as Ahab,leaning over the taffrail, eyed the homewardbound craft, he tookfrom his pocket a small vial of sand, and then looking from the shipto the vial, seemed thereby bringing two remote associations together,for that vial was filled with Nantucket soundings.