Chapter CVI: 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 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 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.