{"id":"01KJNXJV8FDPQ9BWC08GAK6A7C","cid":"bafkreidb4bm4dw3gj6uhf6uqvilgjcyoqtedfrrzct4evapgppamuubewa","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":979719,"char_start":972180,"chunk_index":137,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1885,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"get the right. Do you know, gentlemen”—very gravely and mathematically\r\nbowing to each Captain in succession—“Do you know, gentlemen, that the\r\ndigestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine\r\nProvidence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest\r\neven a man’s arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the\r\nWhite Whale’s malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to\r\nswallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But\r\nsometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of\r\nmine in Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a\r\ntime let one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a\r\ntwelvemonth or more; when I gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in\r\nsmall tacks, d’ye see. No possible way for him to digest that\r\njack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his general bodily system.\r\nYes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about it, and have a mind\r\nto pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial\r\nto the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only let the whale\r\nhave another chance at you shortly, that’s all.”\r\n\r\n“No, thank ye, Bunger,” said the English Captain, “he’s welcome to the\r\narm he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then; but not to\r\nanother one. No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once,\r\nand that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I\r\nknow that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark\r\nye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?”—glancing at the\r\nivory leg.\r\n\r\n“He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let\r\nalone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all a\r\nmagnet! How long since thou saw’st him last? Which way heading?”\r\n\r\n“Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend’s,” cried Bunger, stoopingly\r\nwalking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; “this man’s\r\nblood—bring the thermometer!—it’s at the boiling point!—his pulse makes\r\nthese planks beat!—sir!”—taking a lancet from his pocket, and drawing\r\nnear to Ahab’s arm.\r\n\r\n“Avast!” roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks—“Man the boat!\r\nWhich way heading?”\r\n\r\n“Good God!” cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put.\r\n“What’s the matter? He was heading east, I think.—Is your Captain\r\ncrazy?” whispering Fedallah.\r\n\r\nBut Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to\r\ntake the boat’s steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle\r\ntowards him, commanded the ship’s sailors to stand by to lower.\r\n\r\nIn a moment he was standing in the boat’s stern, and the Manilla men\r\nwere springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him.\r\nWith back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own,\r\nAhab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 101. The Decanter.\r\n\r\nEre the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she\r\nhailed from London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby,\r\nmerchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of\r\nEnderby & Sons; a house which in my poor whaleman’s opinion, comes not\r\nfar behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point\r\nof real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord\r\n1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous\r\nfish-documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted out\r\nthe first English ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale;\r\nthough for some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant\r\nCoffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets\r\npursued that Leviathan, but only in the North and South Atlantic: not\r\nelsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers were\r\nthe first among mankind to harpoon with civilized steel the great Sperm\r\nWhale; and that for half a century they were the only people of the\r\nwhole globe who so harpooned him.\r\n\r\nIn 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose,\r\nand at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape\r\nHorn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any\r\nsort in the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one;\r\nand returning to her berth with her hold full of the precious sperm,\r\nthe Amelia’s example was soon followed by other ships, English and\r\nAmerican, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific were\r\nthrown open. But not content with this good deed, the indefatigable\r\nhouse again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons—how many, their\r\nmother only knows—and under their immediate auspices, and partly, I\r\nthink, at their expense, the British government was induced to send the\r\nsloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South\r\nSea. Commanded by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling\r\nvoyage of it, and did some service; how much does not appear. But this\r\nis not all. In 1819, the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship\r\nof their own, to go on a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan.\r\nThat ship—well called the “Syren”—made a noble experimental cruise; and\r\nit was thus that the great Japanese Whaling Ground first became\r\ngenerally known. The Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a\r\nCaptain Coffin, a Nantucketer.\r\n\r\nAll honor to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to\r\nthe present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago\r\nhave slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other world.\r\n\r\nThe ship named after him was worthy of the honor, being a very fast\r\nsailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight\r\nsomewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the\r\nforecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps—every\r\nsoul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And that fine\r\ngam I had—long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his\r\nivory heel—it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that\r\nship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever\r\nlose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it\r\nat the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it’s\r\nsqually off there by Patagonia), and all hands—visitors and all—were\r\ncalled to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each\r\nother aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our\r\njackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the\r\nhowling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. However, the masts\r\ndid not go overboard; and by and by we scrambled down, so sober, that\r\nwe had to pass the flip again, though the savage salt spray bursting\r\ndown the forecastle scuttle, rather too much diluted and pickled it to\r\nmy taste.\r\n\r\nThe beef was fine—tough, but with body in it. They said it was\r\nbull-beef; others, that it was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for\r\ncertain, how that was. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial,\r\nsymmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that\r\nyou could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were\r\nswallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their\r\npitching out of you like billiard-balls. The bread—but that couldn’t be\r\nhelped; besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread\r\ncontained the only fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very\r\nlight, and it was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you\r\nate it."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.119Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.119Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}