CHAPTER 115

  The Pequod Meets The Bachelor

  And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing

down before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab's harpoon had been

welded.

  It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in

her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now,

in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat

vain-gloriously, sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the

ground, previous to pointing her prow for home.

  The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red

bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended,

bottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long

lower 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 barrels of

sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender

breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck

was a brazen lamp.

  As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most

surprising success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in

the same seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without

securing a single fish. Not only had barrels of beef and bread been

given away to make room for the far more valuable sperm, but

additional supplemental casks had been bartered for, from the ships

she had met; and these were stowed along the deck, and in the

captain's and officers' state-rooms. Even the cabin table itself had

been knocked into kindling-wood; and the cabin mess dined off the

broad head of an oil-butt, lashed down to the floor for a centerpiece.

In the forecastle, the sailors had actually caulked and pitched

their chests, and filled them; it was humorously added, that the

cook 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 irons and filled them;

that indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the captain's

pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, in

self-complacent testimony of his 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 standing round

her huge try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like poke or

stomach skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke

of the clenched hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates

and harpooneers were dancing with the olive-hued girls who had

eloped with them from the Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an

ornamental boat, firmly secured aloft between the foremast and

mainmast, three Long Island negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of

whale ivory, were presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile,

others of the ship's company were tumultuously busy at the 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 mortar were being

hurled into the sea.

  Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on

the ship's elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama

was full before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own

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

forebodings as to things to come- their two captains in themselves

impersonated the 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 art a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call

me an 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 glances towards the

receding Bachelor; but the Bachelor's men never heeding their gaze for

the lively revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over the

taffrail, eyed the homewardbound craft, he took from his pocket a

small vial of sand, and then looking from the ship to the vial, seemed

thereby bringing two remote associations together, for that vial was

filled with Nantucket soundings.