For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects. 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.