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.
CHAPTER 107. The Carpenter.
Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn,and take high abstracted man alone;and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe.But from the same point, take mankind in mass,and for the most part,they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates,both contemporary and hereditary.But most humble though he was,and far from furnishing an example of the high,humane abstraction;the Pequod’s carpenter was no duplicate; hence,he now comes in person on this stage.
Like all sea-going ship carpenters,and more especially those belonging to whaling vessels,he was, to a certain off-handed, practical extent,alike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his own;the carpenter’s pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of all those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with wood as an auxiliary material. But, besides the application to him of the generic remark above, this carpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies continually recurring in a large ship, upon a three or four years’ voyage, in uncivilized and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his readiness in ordinary duties:—repairing stove boats, sprung spars, reforming the shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull’s eyes in the deck, or new tree-nails in the side planks, and other miscellaneous matters more directly pertaining to his special business; he was moreover unhesitatingly expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both useful and capricious.
The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold,was his vice-bench;a long rude ponderous table furnished with several vices,of different sizes, and both of iron and of wood.At all times except when whales were alongside,this bench was securely lashed athwartships against the rear of the Try-works.