Chapter 108.00: CHAPTER 106. Ahab’s Leg.

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CHAPTER 106. Ahab’s Leg.
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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.