.. < chapter cvi 29  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

.. <p 460 >

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 heart-woes, 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

.. <p 461 >

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

.. <p 462 >

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.

.. <p 462 >

