409 
THE WHITE WHALE 
put. “What’s the matter? He was leading east, I think — Is your 
captain crazy ?” whispering Fedallah. 
But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to 
take the boat’s steering-oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle 
towards him, commanded the ship’s sailors to stand by to lower. 
In a moment he was standing in the boat’s stern, and the Manilla 
men were springing to their oars. In vain the English captain hailed 
him. With back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his 
own, Ahab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod. 
CHAPTER C 
THE DECANTER 
Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she 
hailed from London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby, 
merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of 
Enderby & Sons ; a house which in my poor whaleman’s opinion, comes 
not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in 
point of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our 
Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous 
fish documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted out 
the first English ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale; 
though for some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant 
Coflins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets 
pursued that Leviathan, but only in the North and South Atlantic: 
not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers 
were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilised steel the great 
Sperm Whale; and that for half a century they were the only people 
of the whole globe who so harpooned him. 
In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose, 
and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape 
Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale boat of 
any sort in the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky 
one; and returning to her berth with her hold full of the precious 
sperm, the Amelia's example was soon followed by other ships, English 
