August 2, 2019 - Chapter Ninety-one


In the latest encounter of the Pequod with another whaling ship, Stubb takes advantage of a naïve French crew to steal ambergris from one of their dead whales. As one of the Rose-Bud’s crew translates for Stubb, Stubb asks him to tell the French captain, “tell him that now I have eyed him carefully, I'm quite certain that he's no more fit to command a whale-ship than a St. Jago monkey.” Notably, the crewman does not translate this for Stubb. That said, it turns out there is such a thing as a St. Jago monkey, specifically from the (then) Portuguese-controlled islands of Cape Verde. A picture appears below.



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