"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."
"And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all.
Begone! Let it leak! I'm all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks!
not only full of leaky casks, but those leaky casks are in a
leaky ship; and that's a far worse plight than the Pequod's, man.
Yet I don't stop to plug my leak; for who can find it in
the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if found,
in this life's howling gale? Starbuck! I'll not have
the Burtons hoisted."
"What will the owners say, sir?"
"Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell
the Typhoons. What cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art
always prating to me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners,
as if the owners were my conscience. But look ye, the only real
owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye, my conscience
is in this ship's keel.
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