complies with my humor more genially than that boy.--Middle aisle of a
church! What's here?"

"Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck's orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the
hatchway!"

"Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault."

"Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does."

"Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy
shop?"

"I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?"

"Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?"

"Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but
they've set me now to turning it into something else."

"Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling,
monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the
next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those
same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a
jack-of-all-trades."

"But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do."

"The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a
coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the
craters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in
hand. Dost thou never?"

"Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I'm indifferent enough, sir, for that; but
the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there
was none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark
to it."

"Aye, and that's because the lid there's a sounding-board; and what in
all things makes the sounding-board is this--there's naught beneath. And
yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter.
Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against
the churchyard gate, going in?

"Faith, sir, I've--"

"Faith? What's that?"

"Why, faith, sir, it's only a sort of exclamation-like--that's all,
sir."

"Um, um; go on."

"I was about to say, sir, that--"

"Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?
Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight."

"He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot
latitudes. I've heard that the Isle of Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos,
is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some sort of
Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. He's always under
the Line--fiery hot, I tell ye! He's looking this way--come, oakum;
quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the cork, and I'm t