{"id":"01KJNXJV8QM3VJFVGF5MTE1EQ0","cid":"bafkreidkyl7cqhvh7alpzzpixfciwodraxwonbd3436dgl7sswh6sdoffe","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1028909,"char_start":1020930,"chunk_index":144,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1995,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the dead.\r\nCaptain Peleg’s bruited reason for this thing appeared by no means\r\nadequate; though, indeed, as touching all Ahab’s deeper part, every\r\nrevelation partook more of significant darkness than of explanatory\r\nlight. But, in the end, it all came out; this one matter did, at least.\r\nThat direful mishap was at the bottom of his temporary recluseness. And\r\nnot only this, but to that ever-contracting, dropping circle ashore,\r\nwho, for any reason, possessed the privilege of a less banned approach\r\nto him; to that timid circle the above hinted casualty—remaining, as it\r\ndid, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab—invested itself with terrors, not\r\nentirely underived from the land of spirits and of wails. So that,\r\nthrough their zeal for him, they had all conspired, so far as in them\r\nlay, to muffle up the knowledge of this thing from others; and hence it\r\nwas, that not till a considerable interval had elapsed, did it\r\ntranspire upon the Pequod’s decks.\r\n\r\nBut be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air,\r\nor the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not\r\nwith earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took\r\nplain practical procedures;—he called the carpenter.\r\n\r\nAnd when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without\r\ndelay set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him\r\nsupplied with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which\r\nhad thus far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a careful\r\nselection of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be secured.\r\nThis done, the carpenter received orders to have the leg completed that\r\nnight; and to provide all the fittings for it, independent of those\r\npertaining to the distrusted one in use. Moreover, the ship’s forge was\r\nordered to be hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the hold; and,\r\nto accelerate the affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at\r\nonce to the forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 107. The Carpenter.\r\n\r\nSeat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high\r\nabstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But\r\nfrom the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they\r\nseem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.\r\nBut most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of\r\nthe high, humane abstraction; the Pequod’s carpenter was no duplicate;\r\nhence, he now comes in person on this stage.\r\n\r\nLike all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those belonging\r\nto whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-handed, practical extent,\r\nalike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his\r\nown; the carpenter’s pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk\r\nof all those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with\r\nwood as an auxiliary material. But, besides the application to him of\r\nthe generic remark above, this carpenter of the Pequod was singularly\r\nefficient in those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies continually\r\nrecurring in a large ship, upon a three or four years’ voyage, in\r\nuncivilized and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his readiness in\r\nordinary duties:—repairing stove boats, sprung spars, reforming the\r\nshape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull’s eyes in the deck, or new\r\ntree-nails in the side planks, and other miscellaneous matters more\r\ndirectly pertaining to his special business; he was moreover\r\nunhesitatingly expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both\r\nuseful and capricious.\r\n\r\nThe one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold,\r\nwas his vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished with several\r\nvices, of different sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all times\r\nexcept when whales were alongside, this bench was securely lashed\r\nathwartships against the rear of the Try-works.\r\n\r\nA belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole:\r\nthe carpenter claps it into one of his ever-ready vices, and\r\nstraightway files it smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage\r\nstrays on board, and is made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of\r\nright-whale bone, and cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter\r\nmakes a pagoda-looking cage for it. An oarsman sprains his wrist: the\r\ncarpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb longed for vermillion stars\r\nto be painted upon the blade of his every oar; screwing each oar in his\r\nbig vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically supplies the\r\nconstellation. A sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: the\r\ncarpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache: the carpenter out\r\npincers, and clapping one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there;\r\nbut the poor fellow unmanageably winces under the unconcluded\r\noperation; whirling round the handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter\r\nsigns him to clap his jaw in that, if he would have him draw the tooth.\r\n\r\nThus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent\r\nand without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory; heads he\r\ndeemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans. But\r\nwhile now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished and with\r\nsuch liveliness of expertness in him, too; all this would seem to argue\r\nsome uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not precisely so. For\r\nnothing was this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal\r\nstolidity as it were; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into the\r\nsurrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with the general\r\nstolidity discernible in the whole visible world; which while\r\npauselessly active in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its peace,\r\nand ignores you, though you dig foundations for cathedrals. Yet was\r\nthis half-horrible stolidity in him, involving, too, as it appeared, an\r\nall-ramifying heartlessness;—yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an\r\nold, crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked\r\nnow and then with a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might have\r\nserved to pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded\r\nforecastle of Noah’s ark. Was it that this old carpenter had been a\r\nlife-long wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had\r\ngathered no moss; but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small\r\noutward clingings might have originally pertained to him? He was a\r\nstript abstract; an unfractioned integral; uncompromised as a new-born\r\nbabe; living without premeditated reference to this world or the next.\r\nYou might almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him\r\ninvolved a sort of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did\r\nnot seem to work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he\r\nhad been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or\r\nuneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal\r\nprocess. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one,\r\nmust have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was\r\nlike one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, _multum in\r\nparvo_, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior—though a little\r\nswelled—of a common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of\r\nvarious sizes, but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls,\r\npens, rulers, nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted\r\nto use the carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do was to open\r\nthat part of him, and the screw was fast: or if for tweezers, take him\r\nup by the legs, and there they were.\r\n\r\nYet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter,\r\nwas, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a\r\ncommon soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously\r\ndid its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few\r\ndrops of hartshorn, there is no telling."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXMCV8J37JHVK8J8PY15EG","peer_label":"captain peleg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3DZQ5YTC2NQ9Q7VBWR","peer_label":"ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV7VCG1M1V2KKXZJD4A9","peer_label":"stubb","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMZ929S4RXS57BZ9CJAA2","peer_label":"blacksmith","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN8Z064S45605W0V6697R","peer_label":"jaw-ivory","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"material","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFN5JH2WAN4GHBDA0QKV","peer_label":"ships forge","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"equipment","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFDWWG4MJ9FFZF0AHYE6","peer_label":"vice-bench","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"workstation","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNC9H7JEESTY09JE4MBA1","peer_label":"ahabs replacement leg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"prosthetic_limb","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFACARGY7N57QRE602WD","peer_label":"sheffield contrivances","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNN7A1MRJQTZX2X9W3BE8","peer_label":"ahabs direful mishap","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"event","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN7GWXF2P0RA677Z76ETY","peer_label":"pequods carpenter","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:30.418Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.127Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:05:54.936Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}