THE WHITE WHALE 323 
Sperm Whale. And that the great monster is indomitable, you will 
yet have reason to know. 
CHAPTEK LXXX 
THE PEQUOD MEETS THE VIRGIH 
The pedestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau , 
Derick de Deer, master, of Bremen. 
At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch 
and Germans are now among the least ; but here and there at very wide 
intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with 
their flag in the Pacific, 
For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her 
respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod , she rounded 
to, and dropping a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, im- 
patiently standing in the bows instead of the stern. 
“What has he in his hand there V ’ cried Starbuck, pointing to some- 
thing wavingly held by the German. “Impossible! — a lamp-feeder!” 
“Not that,” said Stubb, “no, no, it’s a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; 
he’s coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don’t you see 
that big tin can there alongside of him? — that’s his boiling water. 
Oh ! he’s all right, is the Yarman.” 
“Go along with you,” cried Flask. “It’s a lamp-feeder and an oil- 
can. He’s out of oil, and has come a-beggin.” 
However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil 
on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict 
the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes 
•such a thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick 
de Deer did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare. 
As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at 
all heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo the 
German soon envinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; 
immediately turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oilcan, 
with some remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at 
night in profound darkness — his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, 
