"
SIR T. BROWNE, V.E.
It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when
we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapoury, mid-day sea, that the
many noses on the Pequod's deck proved more vigilant discoverers than
the three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant
smell was 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.
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