"He may be right, he may be wrong.

He's likely to be right: for if he isn't, where can the stuff be?
On the other hand, if he's wrong, we destroy a hundred and fifty tons of good rice for nothing.

It's a point to be considered." "I don't hesitate," said I."Let's get to the bottom of the thing.

The rice is nothing; the rice will neither make nor break us." "That's how I expected you to see it," returned Nares.
And we called the boat away and set forth on our new quest.
The hold was now almost entirely emptied; the mats (of which there went forty to the short ton) had been stacked on deck, and now crowded the ship's waist and forecastle.

It was our task to disembowel and explore six thousand individual mats, and incidentally to destroy a hundred and fifty tons of valuable food.