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 vaingloriously, sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to pointing her prow for home.

The three men at her masthead wore long streamers of narrow red bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whaleboat 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 colours 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 topmast 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.