Call me Ishmael. Years ago, finding myself poor and aimless on land, I decided to sail and view the watery world. This is my method for curing melancholy and regulating my blood. Whenever my mouth grows grim, or my soul feels like a damp, drizzly November, I know it is time to leave. The urge becomes undeniable when I pause before coffin before warehouses, trail behind funerals, or feel a manic impulse to knock hats off in the street. Going to sea is my alternative to suicide. While Cato died on his sword with a flourish, I quietly board a ship. This impulse is not unique; almost all men feel a magnetic pull toward the ocean.
The Pequod lay entrapped in the smell with no breeze to escape. Stubb pulled off for the stranger and read her name: Bouton de Rose—Rose-bud. A wooden rose-bud figurehead, green stem and red bulb, presided over the stench.
He hailed the ship and found a Guernsey-man who spoke English—the chief mate. Had he seen the White Whale? Never heard of such a whale. Ahab retired, and Stubb returned to the Frenchman.
The Guernsey-man had slung his nose in a bag. Aboard, the sailors worked slowly and talked fast, noses projecting like jib-booms. Some ran to the mast-head for fresh air; others dipped oakum in coal-tar and held it to their nostrils. The surgeon yelled entreaties from the round-house.
Stubb sounded the Guernsey-man and found he detested his captain—a conceited ignoramus, a former Cologne manufacturer on his first voyage. The mate had no suspicion about ambergris. Together they concocted a plan: the mate would interpret Stubb’s words as he pleased, and Stubb would utter whatever nonsense came uppermost.
The French captain appeared: small, dark, delicate, with large whiskers and a red cotton velvet vest with watch-seals. The farce began. Stubb said the captain looked babyish; the mate translated that a ship spoke yesterday whose captain and crew died of fever caught from a blasted whale. The captain started with eagerness.
Stubb called the captain unfit to command, a baboon; the mate translated that the dried whale was far more deadly than the blasted one, and conjured them to cut loose as they valued their lives.
The captain ran forward and commanded the crew to cast loose the cables and chains. The whales were abandoned. Stubb confessed he had diddled him; the mate translated that Stubb was happy to have been of service.
The Frenchman’s boats towed the ship away; Stubb benevolently towed the lighter whale in the opposite direction, slacking out an unusually long tow-line. A breeze sprang up. The Pequod slid between the Frenchman and Stubb’s whale.
Stubb pulled to the floating body and began excavation with his boat-spade. His crew looked like gold-hunters. The horrible nosegay increased—then suddenly a faint stream of perfume stole through the tide of bad smells.
Stubb struck something and cried out—a purse! He drew out handfuls of something like ripe Windsor soap or rich mottled old cheese, unctuous and savory, between yellow and ash colour. Ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce. Six handfuls were obtained; more was lost to the sea. Still more might have been secured, but Ahab’s loud command cut the enterprise short: desist and come aboard, else the ship would bid them goodbye. Amid the stench of death, a fortune in perfume—and even Stubb’s cunning must yield to Ahab’s relentless purpose.
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