Chapter 102.00: The Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.

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The Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.
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“Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?”

So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colours, bearing
down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his
hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger
captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat’s bow. He was a
darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or
thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round him in
festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket streamed
behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar’s surcoat.

“Hast seen the White Whale?”

“See you this?” and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it, he
held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like
a mallet.

“Man my boat!” cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near
him—“Stand by to lower!”

In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his crew
were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the stranger. But
here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the excitement of the
moment, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never
once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was
always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to
the Pequod, and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel
at a moment’s warning. Now, it is no very easy matter for anybody—except
those who are almost hourly used to it, like whalemen—to clamber up
a ship’s side from a boat on the open sea; for the great swells now lift
the boat high up towards the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it
half way down to the kelson. So, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship
of course being altogether unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now
found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly
eyeing the uncertain changeful height he could hardly hope to attain.

It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward
circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his
luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And in
the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of the two
officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the perpendicular
ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a pair of
tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not seem to bethink
them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to use their sea
bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the strange
captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, “I see, I
see! —avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing over the
cutting-tackle.”

As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two
previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive curved
blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. This was
quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his
solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in the
fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the
word, held himself fast, and at the same time also helped to hoist his own
weight, by pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of the
tackle. Soon he was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and gently
landed upon the capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in
welcome, the other captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his ivory leg,
and crossing the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades) cried out in his
walrus way, “Aye, aye, hearty! Let us shake bones together! —an arm
and a leg! —an arm that never can shrink, d’ye see; and a leg that
never can run. Where did’st thou see the White Whale? —how long ago?”

“The White Whale,” said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm towards the
East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a telescope;
“there I saw him, on the Line, last season.”

“And he took that arm off, did he?” asked Ahab, now sliding down from the
capstan, and resting on the Englishman’s shoulder, as he did so.

“Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?”

“Spin me the yarn,” said Ahab; “how was it?”

“It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line,” began
the Englishman. “I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time. Well, one
day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat fastened to
one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling and
milling round so, that my boat’s crew could only trim dish, by sitting all
their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom
of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all
crows’ feet and wrinkles.”

“It was he, it was he!” cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his suspended
breath.

“And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin.”

“Aye, aye—they were mine—_my_ irons,” cried Ahab, exultingly—“but
on!”

“Give me a chance, then,” said the Englishman, good-humoredly. “Well, this
old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all afoam into
the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!

“Aye, I see! —wanted to part it; free the fast-fish—an old
trick—I know him.”

“How it was exactly,” continued the one-armed commander, “I do not know;
but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow;
but we didn’t know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled on the line,
bounce we came plump on to his hump! Instead of the other whale’s; that
went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters stood, and what a
noble great whale it was—the noblest and biggest I ever saw, sir, in
my life—I resolved to capture him, spite of the boiling rage he
seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or the
tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boat’s crew
for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say, I jumped into my
first mate’s boat—Mr. Mounttop’s here (by the way, Captain—Mounttop;
Mounttop—the captain);—as I was saying, I jumped into
Mounttop’s boat, which, d’ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then;
and snatching the first harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it.
But, Lord, look you, sir—hearts and souls alive, man—the next
instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat—both eyes out—all
befogged and bedeadened with black foam—the whale’s tail looming
straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble steeple. No
use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday, with a blinding
sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after the second iron, to
toss it overboard—down comes the tail like a Lima tower, cutting my
boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and, flukes first, the white
hump backed through the wreck, as though it was all chips. We all struck
out. To escape his terrible flailings, I seized hold of my harpoon-pole
sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that like a sucking fish. But a
combing sea dashed me off, and at the same instant, the fish, taking one
good dart forwards, went down like a flash; and the barb of that cursed
second iron towing along near me caught me here” (clapping his hand just
below his shoulder); “yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me down to
Hell’s flames, I was thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the good
God, the barb ript its way along the flesh—clear along the whole
length of my arm—came out nigh my wrist, and up I floated;—and
that gentleman there will tell you the rest (by the way, captain—Dr.
Bunger, ship’s surgeon: Bunger, my lad,—the captain). Now, Bunger
boy, spin your part of the yarn.”

The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all the
time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote his
gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but sober
one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patched
trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between a
marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other,
occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two
crippled captains. But, at his superior’s introduction of him to Ahab, he
politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain’s bidding.

“It was a shocking bad wound,” began the whale-surgeon; “and, taking my
advice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy—”

“Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship,” interrupted the one-armed
captain, addressing Ahab; “go on, boy.”

“Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing hot
weather there on the Line. But it was no use—I did all I could; sat
up with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet—”

“Oh, very severe!” chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly altering
his voice, “Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till he couldn’t
see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed, half seas over, about
three o’clock in the morning. Oh, ye stars! He sat up with me indeed, and
was very severe in my diet. Oh! A great watcher, and very dietetically
severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you dog, laugh out! Why don’t ye? You know
you’re a precious jolly rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I’d rather be
killed by you than kept alive by any other man.”

“My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir”—said
the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab—“is
apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that sort.
But I may as well say—en passant, as the French remark—that I
myself—that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergy—am
a strict total abstinence man; I never drink—”

“Water!” cried the captain; “he never drinks it; it’s a sort of fits to
him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on—go on
with the arm story.”

“Yes, I may as well,” said the surgeon, coolly. “I was about observing,
sir, before Captain Boomer’s facetious interruption, that spite of my best
and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth
was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two
feet and several inches long. I measured it with the lead line. In short,
it grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it came. But I had no
hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is against all rule”—pointing
at it with the marlingspike—“that is the captain’s work, not mine;
he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had that club-hammer there put to
the end, to knock some one’s brains out with, I suppose, as he tried mine
once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this dent,
sir”—removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and exposing a
bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the slightest scarry
trace, or any token of ever having been a wound—“Well, the captain
there will tell you how that came here; he knows.”

“No, I don’t,” said the captain, “but his mother did; he was born with it.
Oh, you solemn rogue, you—you Bunger! Was there ever such another
Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in
pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal.”

“What became of the White Whale?” now cried Ahab, who thus far had been
impatiently listening to this by-play between the two Englishmen.

“Oh!” cried the one-armed captain, “oh, yes! Well; after he sounded, we
didn’t see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I didn’t
then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till some
time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby Dick—as
some call him—and then I knew it was he.”

“Did’st thou cross his wake again?”

“Twice.”

“But could not fasten?”

“Didn’t want to try to: ain’t one limb enough? What should I do without
this other arm? And I’m thinking Moby Dick doesn’t bite so much as he
swallows.”

“Well, then,” interrupted Bunger, “give him your left arm for bait to get
the right. Do you know, gentlemen”—very gravely and mathematically
bowing to each Captain in succession—“Do you know, gentlemen, that
the digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine
Providence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest even
a man’s arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the White
Whale’s malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a
single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like
the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making
believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop into him in
good earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when I gave
him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks, d’ye see. No possible
way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his
general bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about
it, and have a mind to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of
giving decent burial to the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only
let the whale have another chance at you shortly, that’s all.”

“No, thank ye, Bunger,” said the English Captain, “he’s welcome to the arm
he has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then; but not to
another one. No more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once, and
that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know
that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye,
he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?”—glancing at the
ivory leg.

“He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone,
that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all a magnet!
How long since thou saw’st him last? Which way heading?”

“Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend’s,” cried Bunger, stoopingly
walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; “this man’s blood—bring
the thermometer! —it’s at the boiling point! —his pulse makes
these planks beat! —sir!”—taking a lancet from his pocket, and
drawing near to Ahab’s arm.

“Avast!” roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks—“Man the
boat! Which way heading?”

“Good God!” cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put.
“What’s the matter? He was heading east, I think. —Is your Captain
crazy?” whispering Fedallah.

But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to take
the boat’s steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle towards
him, commanded the ship’s sailors to stand by to lower.

In a moment he was standing in the boat’s stern, and the Manilla men were
springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With back
to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood
upright till alongside of the Pequod.