Kabanata Kabanata 100 · Leg and Arm.

The Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.

“Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?”

So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colours,

bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was

standing in his hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to

the stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat’s

bow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of

sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round

him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket

streamed behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar’s surcoat.

“Hast seen the White Whale?”

“See you this?” and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it,

he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden

head like a mallet.

“Man my boat!” cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near

him—“Stand by to lower!”

In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his

crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the

stranger. But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the

excitement of the moment, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his

leg he had never once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his

own, and then it was always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical

contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a thing not to be rigged and

shipped in any other vessel at a moment’s warning. Now, it is no very

easy matter for anybody—except those who are almost hourly used to it,

like whalemen—to clamber up a ship’s side from a boat on the open sea;

for the great swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks,

and then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. So,

deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether

unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly

reduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain

changeful height he could hardly hope to attain.

It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward

circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his

luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And

in the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of the

two officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the

perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a

pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not seem

to bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to

use their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute,

because the strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood,

cried out, “I see, I see!—avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing

over the cutting-tackle.”

As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two

previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive

curved blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end.

This was quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all,

slid his solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting

in the fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then

giving the word, held himself fast, and at the same time also helped to

hoist his own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running

parts of the tackle. Soon he was carefully swung inside the high

bulwarks, and gently landed upon the capstan head. With his ivory arm

frankly thrust forth in welcome, the other captain advanced, and Ahab,

putting out his ivory leg, and crossing the ivory arm (like two

sword-fish blades) cried out in his walrus way, “Aye, aye, hearty! let

us shake bones together!—an arm and a leg!—an arm that never can

shrink, d’ye see; and a leg that never can run. Where did’st thou see

the White Whale?—how long ago?”

“The White Whale,” said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm towards

the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a

telescope; “there I saw him, on the Line, last season.”

“And he took that arm off, did he?” asked Ahab, now sliding down from

the capstan, and resting on the Englishman’s shoulder, as he did so.

“Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?”

“Spin me the yarn,” said Ahab; “how was it?”

“It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line,”

began the Englishman. “I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time.

Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat

fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went

milling and milling round so, that my boat’s crew could only trim dish,

by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches

from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white

head and hump, all crows’ feet and wrinkles.”

“It was he, it was he!” cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his suspended

breath.

“And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin.”

“Aye, aye—they were mine—_my_ irons,” cried Ahab, exultingly—“but on!”

“Give me a chance, then,” said the Englishman, good-humoredly. “Well,

this old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all

afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!

“Aye, I see!—wanted to part it; free the fast-fish—an old trick—I know

him.”

“How it was exactly,” continued the one-armed commander, “I do not

know; but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there

somehow; but we didn’t know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled

on the line, bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the other

whale’s; that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters

stood, and what a noble great whale it was—the noblest and biggest I

ever saw, sir, in my life—I resolved to capture him, spite of the

boiling rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would

get loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a

devil of a boat’s crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I

say, I jumped into my first mate’s boat—Mr. Mounttop’s here (by the

way, Captain—Mounttop; Mounttop—the captain);—as I was saying, I jumped

into Mounttop’s boat, which, d’ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with

mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old

great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir—hearts and souls

alive, man—the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat—both eyes

out—all befogged and bedeadened with black foam—the whale’s tail

looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble

steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday,

with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after

the second iron, to toss it overboard—down comes the tail like a Lima

tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and,

flukes first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was

all chips. We all struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I

seized hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung

to that like a sucking fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at

the same instant, the fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down

like a flash; and the barb of that cursed second iron towing along near

me caught me here” (clapping his hand just below his shoulder); “yes,

caught me just here, I say, and bore me down to Hell’s flames, I was

thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the good God, the barb

ript its way along the flesh—clear along the whole length of my

arm—came out nigh my wrist, and up I floated;—and that gentleman there

will tell you the rest (by the way, captain—Dr. Bunger, ship’s surgeon:

Bunger, my lad,—the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part of the

yarn.”

The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all

the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote

his gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but

sober one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and

patched trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between

a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other,

occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two

crippled captains. But, at his superior’s introduction of him to Ahab,

he politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain’s bidding.

“It was a shocking bad wound,” began the whale-surgeon; “and, taking my

advice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy—”

“Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship,” interrupted the one-armed

captain, addressing Ahab; “go on, boy.”

“Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing

hot weather there on the Line. But it was no use—I did all I could; sat

up with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet—”

“Oh, very severe!” chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly

altering his voice, “Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till

he couldn’t see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed, half

seas over, about three o’clock in the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat up

with me indeed, and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great watcher,

and very dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you dog, laugh

out! why don’t ye? You know you’re a precious jolly rascal.) But, heave

ahead, boy, I’d rather be killed by you than kept alive by any other

man.”

“My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir”—said the

imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab—“is apt to

be facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that sort. But

I may as well say—en passant, as the French remark—that I myself—that

is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergy—am a strict total

abstinence man; I never drink—”

“Water!” cried the captain; “he never drinks it; it’s a sort of fits to

him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on—go on with

the arm story.”

“Yes, I may as well,” said the surgeon, coolly. “I was about observing,

sir, before Captain Boomer’s facetious interruption, that spite of my

best and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse;

the truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw;

more than two feet and several inches long. I measured it with the lead

line. In short, it grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it

came. But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is

against all rule”—pointing at it with the marlingspike—“that is the

captain’s work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had

that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock some one’s brains out

with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. He flies into diabolical

passions sometimes. Do ye see this dent, sir”—removing his hat, and

brushing aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull,

but which bore not the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever

having been a wound—“Well, the captain there will tell you how that

came here; he knows.”

“No, I don’t,” said the captain, “but his mother did; he was born with

it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you—you Bunger! was there ever such another

Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in

pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal.”

“What became of the White Whale?” now cried Ahab, who thus far had been

impatiently listening to this by-play between the two Englishmen.

“Oh!” cried the one-armed captain, “oh, yes! Well; after he sounded, we

didn’t see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I

didn’t then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick,

till some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about

Moby Dick—as some call him—and then I knew it was he.”

“Did’st thou cross his wake again?”

“Twice.”

“But could not fasten?”

“Didn’t want to try to: ain’t one limb enough? What should I do without

this other arm? And I’m thinking Moby Dick doesn’t bite so much as he

swallows.”

“Well, then,” interrupted Bunger, “give him your left arm for bait to

get the right. Do you know, gentlemen”—very gravely and mathematically

bowing to each Captain in succession—“Do you know, gentlemen, that the

digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine

Providence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest

even a man’s arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the

White Whale’s malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to

swallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But

sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of

mine in Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a

time let one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a

twelvemonth or more; when I gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in

small tacks, d’ye see. No possible way for him to digest that

jack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his general bodily system.

Yes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about it, and have a mind

to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial

to the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only let the whale

have another chance at you shortly, that’s all.”

“No, thank ye, Bunger,” said the English Captain, “he’s welcome to the

arm he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then; but not to

another one. No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once,

and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I

know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark

ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?”—glancing at the

ivory leg.

“He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let

alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all a

magnet! How long since thou saw’st him last? Which way heading?”

“Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend’s,” cried Bunger, stoopingly

walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; “this man’s

blood—bring the thermometer!—it’s at the boiling point!—his pulse makes

these planks beat!—sir!”—taking a lancet from his pocket, and drawing

near to Ahab’s arm.

“Avast!” roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks—“Man the boat!

Which way heading?”

“Good God!” cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put.

“What’s the matter? He was heading east, I think.—Is your Captain

crazy?” whispering Fedallah.

But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to

take the boat’s steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle

towards him, commanded the ship’s sailors to stand by to lower.

In a moment he was standing in the boat’s stern, and the Manilla men

were springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him.

With back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own,

Ahab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.