A week or two after the encounter with the armada, the Pequod comes upon an especially foul-smelling French ship called the Bouton-de-Rose (French, “Rose-Bud”). The source of the odor is two whales, now lashed to the ship, members of the armada and mortally wounded in the previous encounter with the men of the Pequod. They obviously have been dead a while. Stubb goes aboard and speaks to the French captain through an interpreter. As the Rose-Bud sails away, Stubb tows the smaller whale a short distance with his open boat and finds in it a valuable substance. Ahab has little interest in any of this because the Rose-Bud has not seen Moby Dick.
