454 MOBY DICK; OR 
breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck was 
a brazen lamp. 
As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most 
surprising success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in 
the same seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without 
securing a single fish. Not only had barrels of beef and bread been 
given away to make room for the far more valuable sperm, but addi- 
tional supplemental casks had been bartered for, from the ships she had 
met; and these were stowed along the deck, and in the captain’s and 
officers’ state-rooms. Even the cabin table itself had been knocked into 
kindling-wood ; and the cabin mess dined off the broad head of an oil- 
butt, lashed down to the floor for a centrepiece. In the forecastle, the 
sailors had actually caulked and pitched their chests, and filled them; 
it was humorously added, that the cook had clapped a head on his 
largest boiler, and filled it; that the steward had plugged his spare 
coffee-pot and filled it; that the harpooneers had headed the sockets 
of their irons and filled them; that indeed everything was filled with 
sperm, except the captain’s pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved 
to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testimony of his entire 
satisfaction. 
As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod , 
the barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle ; and 
drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round 
her huge try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like poke or 
stomach skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke 
of the clenched hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates 
and harpooneers were dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped 
with them from the Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an orna- 
mented boat, firmly secured aloft between the foremast and mainmast, 
three Long Island negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, 
were presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile, others of the ship’s 
company were tumultuously busy at the masonry of the try-works, from 
which the huge pots had been removed. You would have almost 
thought they were pulling down the cursed Bastile, such wild cries 
they raised, as the now useless brick and mortar were being hurled 
into the sea. 
Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the 
