Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Exchanging Ivory Limbs

Once aboard, the two captains immediately recognize their shared condition. Ahab thrust forth his ivory arm while the English captain offered his own, the two prostheses crossing “like two sword-fish blades.” Ahab cries out to shake “bones together—an arm and a leg!—an arm that never can shrink, d’ye see; and a leg that never can run.” This moment establishes the kinship between them through their mutual dismemberment by the same whale.

The Lost Arm Story

Captain Boomer recounts how Moby Dick took his arm during a hunt on the Line. After catching a pod of whales and becoming entangled with one whale, the White Whale attacked, biting the line and causing the crew to be thrown against his hump. When Boomer grabbed a second harpoon to attack, the whale’s tail sliced his boat in two. He seized a harpoon pole but was swept off, and the barb of the second harpoon caught him below the shoulder, dragging him underwater before it ripped free along the length of his arm and he floated to the surface.

Dr. Bunger

The ship’s surgeon of the Samuel Enderby, Dr. Bunger, is introduced. He is a round-faced, sober-looking man in a faded blue woollen frock, holding a marlingspike and pill-box. Despite his professional appearance, he reveals himself to be both facetious and pompous. He claims to be a strict total abstinence man—Captain Boomer immediately interrupts to note that Bunger never drinks water and becomes hydrophobic at the mere thought of it. His manner combines sanctimony with dark humor, as he jokes about his captain’s injuries and refers to the ivory arm as a “club-hammer” used “to knock some one’s brains out.”

The Surgeon’s Account

Dr. Bunger provides a professional account of treating Captain Boomer’s wound, which was over two feet long and several inches wide. Despite his efforts, the wound turned gangrenous and required amputation. The surgeon notes that he did not manufacture the ivory arm—that was the captain’s own doing, ordered through the carpenter. Bunger’s clinical detachment contrasts sharply with Captain Boomer’s good-humored interruptions, as he recalls the surgeon “sitting up with him nights” while drinking “hot rum toddies” until three in the morning, then being “very severe with him in the matter of diet.”

The Skull Deformity

When Bunger mentions a dent in his skull, he reveals a bowl-like cavity with no scar tissue, indicating it was a congenital condition rather than an injury. Captain Boomer explains that Bunger was born with it,调侃ing the surgeon as “a solemn rogue” who “ought to die in pickle” and should be “preserved to future ages.” This exchange reveals the casual camaraderie among whalemen who have shared years at sea together.

Ahab’s Obsession

As the conversation turns to Moby Dick, Ahab’s intensity becomes increasingly evident. When Bunger suggests the whale’s malicious attacks are actually awkwardness rather than intent, Ahab’s blood runs hot, his pulse making the ship’s planks beat. Bunger observes that Ahab’s blood is “at the boiling point” and approaches with a lancet, but Ahab violently pushes him away. The contrast between Boomer’s contentment with his loss and Ahab’s consuming obsession becomes starkly apparent.

Departure

When Ahab learns the White Whale was heading east, he immediately departs. Ignoring the English captain’s hails and his own men, Ahab swings the cutting-tackle toward Fedallah and commands the ship to stand by to lower. In a moment, he stands in the boat’s stern while the Manilla men spring to their oars. With his back to the stranger ship and face set like flint toward his own vessel, Ahab returns to the Pequod, abandoning further conversation for the hunt.

KAPITEL 101. The Decanter.

The chapter opens with an account of the Samuel Enderby, an English whaling ship named for the merchant whose family house, Enderby & Sons, played a pioneering role in the development of the sperm whale fishery, fitting out vessels as early as 1775 and sending the Amelia around Cape Horn in 1778 to open the vast South Sea grounds. The narrator recounts a memorable visit aboard the ship off the Patagonian coast, describing the hearty provisions of beef and dumplings, the consumption of vast quantities of flip, and a lively encounter that highlights the celebrated hospitality of English whalers. This hospitality is traced back to Dutch whaling traditions, exemplified by a detailed inventory of provisions for a fleet of 180 Dutch whalers that included hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef and biscuit alongside thousands of barrels of beer and ankers of gin, suggesting that the tradition of abundant good cheer on whaling ships derived from Dutch practices and survived in the English fishery to the narrator’s time, concluding with the punning reference to the decanter’s emptying.