CHAPTER 106
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 softcymballing, 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.
