Leg and Arm — Moby-Dick

The Pequod meets an English whaling ship called the Samuel Enderby. Ahab shouts through a trumpet, asking if they have seen the White Whale. The English captain is Captain Boomer, a big friendly man with one empty sleeve. He holds up a white whale-bone arm with a wooden head like a mallet. Ahab is so excited that he rows over right away. But he cannot climb the ship's side with only one leg. His own ship has a special device for him, and this stranger does not. He stands in the boat feeling helpless and angry until Boomer orders the crew to lower a blubber hook on a tackle. They hoist Ahab aboard like cargo and set him on the capstan.

Ahab jokes about shaking bones together, his ivory leg and Boomer's ivory arm. Then he demands the story. Boomer says he saw Moby Dick on the equator last season. On his first voyage there, his boat was tied to a whale when the white-headed monster rose from the sea. Ahab cries out that the harpoons in the whale were his own irons. The white whale bit the line, got tangled, and pulled Boomer's boat to him. The whale's tail rose like a tower and smashed the boat in two. A barb tore along Boomer's arm. Dr. Bunger, the ship's surgeon, had to cut the arm off.

Bunger tells the story with dry humor while Boomer jokes about rum toddies and bad nursing. Bunger even lectures that whales cannot really digest a man's arm. Boomer says he will not hunt the White Whale again. One lost limb is enough. There would be glory and oil in killing Moby Dick, but the whale is best left alone.

Ahab agrees the whale should be left alone, then says he will hunt him anyway because the accursed thing is still a magnet. He asks which way Moby Dick was heading. When Bunger tries to check Ahab's feverish blood with a lancet, Ahab throws him against the rail, orders his boat manned, and rows back to the Pequod without a goodbye. The English captain whispers that Ahab must be crazy.