“Who’s there?” hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning round to it. “On deck! Begone!”
“Captain Ahab mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking, sir. We must up Burtons and break out.”
“Up Burtons and break out? Now that we are nearing Japan; heave-to here for a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops?”
“Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make good in a year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving, sir.”
“So it is, so it is; if we get it.”
“I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir.”
Chapter 109, Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin · verse 4
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