He was all bent over complaining of pains in the abdomen.

when a laminated wood diving board begins to split at the seams, there's just one thing to do: cut it apart and glue it back together.

His countenance darkened while he spoke […]

The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania.[…]It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting after overfishing led to a shortage of whale blubber. Other liquids produced in the refining process, too unstable or smoky for lamplight, were burned or dumped.