410 
MOBY DICK; OR 
and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific 
were thrown open. But not content with this good deed, the inde- 
fatigable house again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his sons how 
many, their mother only knows — and under their immediate auspices, 
and partly, I think, at their expense, the British Government was in- 
duced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of dis- 
covery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval post-captain the 
Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and did some service ; how much 
does not appear. But this is not all. In 1819, the same house fitted 
out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on a testing cruise to 
the remote waters of Japan. That ship — well called the Syren — 
made a noble experimental cruise; and it was thus that the great 
Japanese Whaling-Ground first became generally known. The Syren 
in this famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nan- 
tucketer. 
All honour to the Enderbys, therefore, whose house, I think, exists 
to the present day ; though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago 
have slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other world. 
The ship named after him was worthy of the honour, being a very 
fast sailor and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at mid- 
night somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down 
in the forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps 
— every soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And 
that fine gam I had — long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks 
with his ivory heel — it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality 
of that ship ; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember 
me, if I ever lose sight of it. Flip ? Did I say we had flip ? Yes, 
and we flipped it at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the 
squall came (for it’s squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands — 
visitors and all — were called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that 
we had to swing each other aloft in bow-lines ; and we ignorantly furled 
the skirts of our jackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed 
fast in the howling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. How- 
ever the masts did not go overboard; and by and by we scrambled 
down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip again, though the savage 
