{"id":"01KJNXJV7W562B3WPDNMH5WAH9","cid":"bafkreiexfkvr7ibvabo4rteqebopbufuqi36malfvewzulilledbqp7dgi","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":908799,"char_start":901298,"chunk_index":127,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1876,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"the Pequod slid in between him and Stubb’s whale. Whereupon Stubb\r\nquickly pulled to the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to give\r\nnotice of his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his\r\nunrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced an\r\nexcavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You would almost\r\nhave thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea; and when at\r\nlength his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up\r\nold Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English loam. His boat’s crew\r\nwere all in high excitement, eagerly helping their chief, and looking\r\nas anxious as gold-hunters.\r\n\r\nAnd all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and\r\nscreaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning\r\nto look disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay increased,\r\nwhen suddenly from out the very heart of this plague, there stole a\r\nfaint stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells\r\nwithout being absorbed by it, as one river will flow into and then\r\nalong with another, without at all blending with it for a time.\r\n\r\n“I have it, I have it,” cried Stubb, with delight, striking something\r\nin the subterranean regions, “a purse! a purse!”\r\n\r\nDropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls of\r\nsomething that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old\r\ncheese; very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily dent it with\r\nyour thumb; it is of a hue between yellow and ash colour. And this,\r\ngood friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any\r\ndruggist. Some six handfuls were obtained; but more was unavoidably\r\nlost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been secured were\r\nit not for impatient Ahab’s loud command to Stubb to desist, and come\r\non board, else the ship would bid them good bye.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 92. Ambergris.\r\n\r\nNow this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an\r\narticle of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain\r\nCoffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that\r\nsubject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day,\r\nthe precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem\r\nto the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound\r\nfor grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber,\r\nthough at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far\r\ninland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea.\r\nBesides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorless substance,\r\nused for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris\r\nis soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely\r\nused in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and\r\npomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for\r\nthe same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter’s in Rome.\r\nSome wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it.\r\n\r\nWho would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should\r\nregale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a\r\nsick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the\r\ncause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to\r\ncure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering\r\nthree or four boat loads of Brandreth’s pills, and then running out of\r\nharm’s way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.\r\n\r\nI have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris,\r\ncertain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be\r\nsailors’ trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were\r\nnothing more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner.\r\n\r\nNow that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be\r\nfound in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that\r\nsaying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption;\r\nhow that we are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory. And likewise\r\ncall to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that maketh the\r\nbest musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all things of\r\nill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is\r\nthe worst.\r\n\r\nI should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but\r\ncannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against\r\nwhalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds,\r\nmight be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said\r\nof the Frenchman’s two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous\r\naspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is\r\nthroughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to\r\nrebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this\r\nodious stigma originate?\r\n\r\nI opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the\r\nGreenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because\r\nthose whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea\r\nas the Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the fresh\r\nblubber in small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks,\r\nand carry it home in that manner; the shortness of the season in those\r\nIcy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed,\r\nforbidding any other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking\r\ninto the hold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the\r\nGreenland dock, a savor is given forth somewhat similar to that arising\r\nfrom excavating an old city grave-yard, for the foundations of a\r\nLying-in Hospital.\r\n\r\nI partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be\r\nlikewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former\r\ntimes, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which\r\nlatter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great\r\nwork on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports\r\n(smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to\r\nafford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried\r\nout, without being taken home to Holland for that purpose. It was a\r\ncollection of furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works\r\nwere in full operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor. But\r\nall this is quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a\r\nvoyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with\r\noil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling\r\nout; and in the state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless.\r\nThe truth is, that living or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a\r\nspecies are by no means creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be\r\nrecognised, as the people of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew\r\nin the company, by the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be\r\notherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high\r\nhealth; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it\r\nis true, seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm\r\nWhale’s flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented\r\nlady rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the\r\nSperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be\r\nto that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh,\r\nwhich was led out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great?\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 93."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.100Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.100Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}