up), this village
was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale-fleet
to be tried out, without being taken home to Holland for that purpose. It was a
collection of furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil-sheds; and when the works were in
full operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savour. But all this is
quite different with a South Sea sperm whaler; which in a voyage of four years
perhaps, after completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume
fifty days in the business of boiling out; and in the state that it is casked,
the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that living or dead, if but decently
treated, whales as a species are by no means creatures of ill odour; nor can
whalemen be recognised, as the people of the Middle Ages affected to detect a
Jew in the company, by the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise
than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking
abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the
open air. I say, that the motion of a sperm whale's flukes above water dispenses
a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlour. What
then shall I liken the sperm whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude?
Must it not be to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with
myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to do honour to Alexander the Great?
 

                                 Chapter XCIII

                                  The Castaway

It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most
significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod's crew; an event
most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and
predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever
shattered sequel might prove her own.
    Now, in the whale-ship, it is not everyone that goes in the boats. Some few
hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work the vessel
while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these ship-keepers
are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats' crews. But if there happen
to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship, that wight is
certain to be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequod with the little negro
Pippin by nickname, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before