And I did not know but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth—”
“Well, Captain Bildad,” interrupted Peleg, “what d’ye say, what lay shall we give this young man?”
“Thou knowest best,” was the sepulchral reply, “the seven hundred and seventy-seventh wouldn’t be too much, would it?—‘where moth and rust do corrupt, but lay—’”
Chapter 16, The Ship · verse 41
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