{"id":"01KJNXJQZAKGZMMF6TRDW1AANK","cid":"bafkreigczsu23ryygyiaobsylkaixepngv5ijhhtb3n6tumhtg3wyxs7ym","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":519952,"char_start":512175,"chunk_index":72,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1945,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"squall is the height of a whaleman’s discretion?”\r\n\r\n“Certain. I’ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off\r\nCape Horn.”\r\n\r\n“Mr. Flask,” said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing\r\nclose by; “you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you\r\ntell me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask,\r\nfor an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into\r\ndeath’s jaws?”\r\n\r\n“Can’t you twist that smaller?” said Flask. “Yes, that’s the law. I\r\nshould like to see a boat’s crew backing water up to a whale face\r\nforemost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind\r\nthat!”\r\n\r\nHere then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement\r\nof the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings\r\nin the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters of\r\ncommon occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the\r\nsuperlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign\r\nmy life into the hands of him who steered the boat—oftentimes a fellow\r\nwho at that very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of\r\nscuttling the craft with his own frantic stampings; considering that\r\nthe particular disaster to our own particular boat was chiefly to be\r\nimputed to Starbuck’s driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a\r\nsquall, and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for\r\nhis great heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged to\r\nthis uncommonly prudent Starbuck’s boat; and finally considering in\r\nwhat a devil’s chase I was implicated, touching the White Whale: taking\r\nall things together, I say, I thought I might as well go below and make\r\na rough draft of my will. “Queequeg,” said I, “come along, you shall be\r\nmy lawyer, executor, and legatee.”\r\n\r\nIt may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at\r\ntheir last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world\r\nmore fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical\r\nlife that I had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded\r\nupon the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled\r\naway from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live would be as\r\ngood as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a\r\nsupplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might\r\nbe. I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up in my chest.\r\nI looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a\r\nclean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault.\r\n\r\nNow then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock,\r\nhere goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the\r\ndevil fetch the hindmost.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 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\nNow, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned\r\naway; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such\r\nunaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown\r\nnooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of\r\nwhalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway\r\ncreatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck,\r\noars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that\r\nBeelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin\r\nto chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable\r\nexcitement in the forecastle.\r\n\r\nBut be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate\r\nphantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were\r\nsomehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a\r\nmuffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like\r\nthis, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be\r\nlinked with Ahab’s peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort\r\nof a half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even\r\nauthority over him; all this none knew. But one cannot sustain an\r\nindifferent air concerning Fedallah."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKXNA6Q7NV244AJQKVXKZ","peer_label":"queequeg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV9JR5QVCDKHMH41830J","peer_label":"flask","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKSZYY4PZZGTPZ89W34AF","peer_label":"narrator","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKVYKWFDKYWNFAY5N9KE5","peer_label":"starbuck","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM53WAZ179VTYY5W66JFN","peer_label":"cape horn","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"geographic_feature","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM5STDKZ8TTB44TKEQ2CR","peer_label":"cabaco","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV7VCG1M1V2KKXZJD4A9","peer_label":"stubb","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3DZQ5YTC2NQ9Q7VBWR","peer_label":"ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM6EP73PJRV763QA81RVY","peer_label":"fedallah","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFPA13QV007PGN5RZ3PA","peer_label":"white whale","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXRA1R8MS83Z8QNHV35PJE","peer_label":"crew","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXP72GCJ5SET8B7X5AM7NE","peer_label":"chapter 50","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"document_section","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ24AG5V9HWJGRB871A8R","peer_label":"subordinate phantoms","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"group_of_people","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ37X9DGT09EB19DZZ35Y","peer_label":"thigh board","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"boat_equipment","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ3VGSBWTBE06PEHH735E","peer_label":"whaling_law","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ5WJZJ34M7QWR8KFNMVD","peer_label":"tamerlanes_soldiers","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNMFZD49126PC3D4ZADZH","peer_label":"tamerlane","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"historical_figure","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ70AA7PESV0TZMF6MQYY","peer_label":"joint-owners","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNVMT1G3V6CMJZQVEYE6J","peer_label":"thole-pins","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"boat_equipment","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ2C5FQXRSFHTJDXC7F6N","peer_label":"wooden skewers","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"boat_equipment","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ38V189766KDMBW61R1R","peer_label":"sheathing","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"boat_modification","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQDG5FAA55MKB8Z999Z75","peer_label":"ahabs_preparations","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.366Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.754Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.694Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}