s
smelt in the sea.

"I will bet something now," said Stubb, "that somewhere hereabouts are
some of those drugged whales we tickled the other day. I thought they
would keel up before long."

Presently, the vapours in advance slid aside; and there in the distance
lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must be
alongside. As we glided nearer, the stranger showed French colours from
his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl that circled, and
hovered, and swooped around him, it was plain that the whale alongside
must be what the fishermen call a blasted whale, that is, a whale that
has died unmolested on the sea, and so floated an unappropriated corpse.
It may well be conceived, what an unsavory odor such a mass must
exhale; worse than an Assyrian city in the plague, when the living are
incompetent to bury the departed. So intolerable indeed is it regarded
by some, that no cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it.
Yet are there those who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that
the oil obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior quality, and
by no means of the nature of attar-of-rose.

Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that the Frenchman
had a second whale alongside; and this second whale seemed even more
of a nosegay than the first. In truth, it turned out to be one of
those problematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort
of prodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct bodies
almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. Nevertheless, in the
proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will ever turn
up his nose at such a whale as this, however much he may shun blasted
whales in general.

The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger, that Stubb vowed
he recognised his cutting spade-pole entangled in the lines that were
knotted round the tail of one of these whales.

"There's a pretty fellow, now," he banteringly laughed, standing in the
ship's bows, "there's a jackal for ye! I well know that these Crappoes
of Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lowering
their boats for breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts; yes,
and sometimes sailing from their port with their hold full of boxes of
tallow candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing that all the oil they
will get won't be enough to dip the Captain's wick into; aye, we all
know these things; but look ye, here's a Crappo