Moby Dick

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gentlemen, you shall hear.

"It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing
her prow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho's leak seemed again
increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps
every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our
Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole
way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the officer of
the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the probability
would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, on
account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the
solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it
altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles in
full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length; that is, if it lie
along a tolerably accessible coast, or if any other reasonable retreat
is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of
the way part of those waters, some really landless latitude, that her