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 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 tie 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.