第 一百零六 章 · Ahab’s Leg.

The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel

Enderby of London, had not been unattended with some small violence to

his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his

boat that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock. And when

after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot-hole there, he so

vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to the steersman (it

was, as ever, something about his not steering inflexibly enough);

then, the already shaken ivory received such an additional twist and

wrench, that though it still remained entire, and to all appearances

lusty, yet Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy.

And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his

pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the

condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood. For it had not

been very long prior to the Pequod’s sailing from Nantucket, that he

had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible;

by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his

ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise

smitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extreme

difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured.

Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all

the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of

a former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most

poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as

the sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity,

all miserable events do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than

equally, thought Ahab; since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief

go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of

this: that it is an inference from certain canonic teachings, that

while some natural enjoyments here shall have no children born to them

for the other world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the

joy-childlessness of all hell’s despair; whereas, some guilty mortal

miseries shall still fertilely beget to themselves an eternally

progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave; not at all to hint of

this, there still seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the

thing. For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities

ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at

bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an

archangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the

obvious deduction. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal

miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the

gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft

cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that

the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad

birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the

signers.

Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might more

properly, in set way, have been disclosed before. With many other

particulars concerning Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to some,

why it was, that for a certain period, both before and after the

sailing of the Pequod, he had hidden himself away with such

Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought

speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the dead.

Captain Peleg’s bruited reason for this thing appeared by no means

adequate; though, indeed, as touching all Ahab’s deeper part, every

revelation partook more of significant darkness than of explanatory

light. But, in the end, it all came out; this one matter did, at least.

That direful mishap was at the bottom of his temporary recluseness. And

not only this, but to that ever-contracting, dropping circle ashore,

who, for any reason, possessed the privilege of a less banned approach

to him; to that timid circle the above hinted casualty—remaining, as it

did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab—invested itself with terrors, not

entirely underived from the land of spirits and of wails. So that,

through their zeal for him, they had all conspired, so far as in them

lay, to muffle up the knowledge of this thing from others; and hence it

was, that not till a considerable interval had elapsed, did it

transpire upon the Pequod’s decks.

But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air,

or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not

with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took

plain practical procedures;—he called the carpenter.

And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without

delay set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him

supplied with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which

had thus far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a careful

selection of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be secured.

This done, the carpenter received orders to have the leg completed that

night; and to provide all the fittings for it, independent of those

pertaining to the distrusted one in use. Moreover, the ship’s forge was

ordered to be hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the hold; and,

to accelerate the affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at

once to the forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed.