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 ornamented 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.
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