Chapter 115 The Pequod Meets the Bachelor          A few weeks
pass, and another Nantucket whaleship, the Bachelor, is
encountered -- and in the parlance of the day, "spoken", i.e.
communicated with. The captain and crew of the Bachelor were the
happy beneficiaries of "greasy luck". Their ship was so chock-
full of whale oil that they ostentatiously lashed full casks
high up on the masts. A whaleboat was symbolically suspended
from the stern, bottom UP [note -- the 1967 Norton edition by
Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker gives this as down; but the
same editors give it as up in the 1979 Arion Press edition. UP
certainly makes more sense, because it is unusual for a
whaleboat to be upside down -- so it conveys the message that it
will no longer be needed -- full ship -- greasy luck!]         
The captain was showing off -- sailing around, "vaingloriously"
as Melville puts it, putting on a show for other less fortunate
whalers. We get a wildly exaggerated description of what such a
bonanza might consist: "In t