While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and dropping
a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing
in the bows instead of the stern.
"What has he in his hand there?" cried Starbuck, pointing to something
wavingly held by the German. "Impossible!--a lamp-feeder!"
"Not that," said Stubb, "no, no, it's a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck;
he's coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don't you see
that big tin can there alongside of him?--that's his boiling water.
Oh! he's all right, is the Yarman."
"Go along with you," cried Flask, "it's a lamp-feeder and an oil-can.
He's out of oil, and has come a-begging."
However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing
oil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly
contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle,
yet sometimes such a thing really happens; and in the present
case Captain Derick De Deer did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder
as Flask did declare.
As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at
all heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo,
the German soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale;
immediately turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can,
with some remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at
night in profound darkness--his last drop of Bremen oil being gone,
and not a single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency;
concluding by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery
is technically called a clean one (that is, an empty one), well
deserving the name of Jungfrau or the Virgin.
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