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.”
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