{"id":"01KG8AP9345MK91DEV7GYJYMH4","cid":"bafkreib2xxbcpwfv6p6d37gxg67hvpx2ad6zrc6wfrcitqlorzlk3m3ffi","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":16905,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:49:30.771Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J198KE6FY8WPVJQQRCZ6","start_line":16852,"text":"CHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm.\r\n\r\nThe Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.\r\n\r\n“Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?”\r\n\r\nSo cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colours,\r\nbearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was\r\nstanding in his hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to\r\nthe stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat’s\r\nbow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of\r\nsixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round\r\nhim in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket\r\nstreamed behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar’s surcoat.\r\n\r\n“Hast seen the White Whale?”\r\n\r\n“See you this?” and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it,\r\nhe held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden\r\nhead like a mallet.\r\n\r\n“Man my boat!” cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near\r\nhim—“Stand by to lower!”\r\n\r\nIn less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his\r\ncrew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the\r\nstranger. But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the\r\nexcitement of the moment, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his\r\nleg he had never once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his\r\nown, and then it was always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical\r\ncontrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a thing not to be rigged and\r\nshipped in any other vessel at a moment’s warning. Now, it is no very\r\neasy matter for anybody—except those who are almost hourly used to it,\r\nlike whalemen—to clamber up a ship’s side from a boat on the open sea;\r\nfor the great swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks,\r\nand then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. So,\r\ndeprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether\r\nunsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly\r\nreduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain\r\nchangeful height he could hardly hope to attain.\r\n\r\nIt has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward\r\ncircumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his\r\nluckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And\r\nin the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of the\r\ntwo officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the\r\nperpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a\r\npair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not seem\r\nto bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to\r\nuse their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute,\r\nbecause the strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood,\r\ncried out, “I see, I see!—avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing\r\nover the cutting-tackle.”\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AMA8Z3SXF809T8S42QJDB","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J198KE6FY8WPVJQQRCZ6","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AP9343VY6JPPHQ0C0V2W9","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:49:37.380Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:54.128Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}