{"id":"01KFNR88EQPJDEZN0JSJBRBPN3","cid":"bafkreihcbmnodme5zlhc4z5ttdnqazf35bilrel6obpubzivrhscb3pzyy","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":9289,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:03.435Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 0","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":9227,"text":"CHAPTER 50. Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah.\r\n\r\n“Who would have thought it, Flask!” cried Stubb; “if I had but one leg\r\nyou would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole\r\nwith my timber toe. Oh! he’s a wonderful old man!”\r\n\r\n“I don’t think it so strange, after all, on that account,” said Flask.\r\n“If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing.\r\nThat would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other\r\nleft, you know.”\r\n\r\n“I don’t know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel.”\r\n\r\nAmong whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering\r\nthe paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it\r\nis right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active\r\nperils of the chase. So Tamerlane’s soldiers often argued with tears in\r\ntheir eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried\r\ninto the thickest of the fight.\r\n\r\nBut with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering that\r\nwith two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger;\r\nconsidering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and\r\nextraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then\r\ncomprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed\r\nman to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the\r\njoint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not.\r\n\r\nAhab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of\r\nhis entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of\r\nthe chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving\r\nhis orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually\r\napportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt—above all for\r\nCaptain Ahab to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat’s\r\ncrew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the heads\r\nof the owners of the Pequod. Therefore he had not solicited a boat’s\r\ncrew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head.\r\nNevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching all that\r\nmatter. Until Cabaco’s published discovery, the sailors had little\r\nforeseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little while out of\r\nport, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting the\r\nwhaleboats for service; when some time after this Ahab was now and then\r\nfound bestirring himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his\r\nown hands for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even\r\nsolicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the line is\r\nrunning out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when all this was\r\nobserved in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra\r\ncoat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better\r\nwithstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety\r\nhe evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it\r\nis sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat’s bow for bracing\r\nthe knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was\r\nobserved how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee\r\nfixed in the semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the\r\ncarpenter’s chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a\r\nlittle there; all these things, I say, had awakened much interest and\r\ncuriosity at the time. But almost everybody supposed that this\r\nparticular preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to\r\nthe ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he had already revealed his\r\nintention to hunt that mortal monster in person. But such a supposition\r\ndid by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any boat’s crew\r\nbeing assigned to that boat.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 0"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR8328JSZS08HA694NZ7A0","peer_label":"50","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR8328JSZS08HA694NZ7A0","peer_label":"50","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR88FEYW06KA4XX233VE0G","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:04.044Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:16.695Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}