109 
THE WHITE WHALE 
them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robust- 
ness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and 
shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus. Thread- 
ing its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down 
one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his 
clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It re- 
sembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty 
trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down 
it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the 
bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree 
still greenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with 
him, or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one 
could certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage 
little or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But once 
Tashtego’s senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among the crew, super- 
stitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years old did Ahab 
become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the fury 
of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild 
hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a grey Manxman insinu- 
ated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out of 
Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, 
the old sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested 
this old Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. So that 
no white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever 
Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid out — which might hardly come 
to pass, so he muttered — then, whoever should do that last office for the 
dead, would find a birthmark on him from crown to sole. 
So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the 
livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly 
noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the 
barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously 
come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the 
polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw. “Ay, he was dismasted off 
Japan,” said the old Gay-Head Indian once; “but like his dismasted 
craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. He has 
a quiver of ’em.” 
I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each 
