Bachelor’s Festive Decorations and Full Sperm Oil Hold
The Bachelor is decorated for her successful voyage: her three masthead crew members wear long red bunting streamers on their hats, a whaleboat hangs bottom-down from her stern, the jaw of her final slain whale hangs captive from her bowsprit, colored signals and flags fly from every part of her rigging, barrels of sperm oil are stowed in her three tops, slender breakers of the fluid sit in her top-mast cross-trees, and a brazen lamp is nailed to her main truck.
Bachelor’s Exceptional Whaling Success Amid Poor Industry Catches
The Bachelor’s whaling success is extraordinary, as most other vessels cruising the same seas had failed to catch a single whale for months at a time. The crew gave away barrels of beef and bread to make room for sperm oil, bartered for extra casks from other ships they encountered, and filled nearly every available container on board with the valuable fluid, from forecastle sailor chests to the cook’s largest boiler, the steward’s spare coffee pot, and the harpooneers’ iron sockets, with only the captain’s pantaloons pockets left intentionally unfilled for his own satisfaction.
Bachelor Crew’s Rowdy Celebratory Revelry
As the Bachelor nears the Pequod, her crew indulges in raucous revelry: barbaric drums boom from her forecastle, her mates and harpooneers dance with the Polynesian women they eloped with on her quarter-deck, three Long Island Black fiddlers play whale-ivory fiddles from a suspended boat secured between her foremast and mainmast, and other crew members tear down the brick and mortar of her now-unused try-works, hurling the debris into the sea with wild cries.
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