209 
THE WHITE WHALE 
taking all things together, I say, I thought I might as well go below 
and make a rough draft of my will. “Queequeg,” said I, “come along ; 
you shall be my lawyer, executor, and legatee.” 
It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at 
their last wills and testaments, hut there are no people in the world 
more fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical 
life that I had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded 
upon the present occasion, I felt all the easier ; a stone was rolled away 
from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live would be as 
supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case 
might be. I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up 
in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a 
quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug 
family vault. 
How then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my 
frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and 
the devil fetch the hindmost. 
CHAPTEK XLIX 
ARAB'S BOAT AJ5TD CREW. FEDALLAH 
«Who> would have thought it, Flask!” cried Stubb; “if I had hut 
one leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug- 
hole with my timber toe. Oh ! he’s a wonderful old man !” 
“I don’t think it so strange, after all, on that account,” said Flask. 
“If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing. 
That would disable him; hut he has one knee, and good part of the 
other left, you know.” 
“I don’t know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel.” 
Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, con- 
sidering the paramount importance of his life to the success of the 
voyage, it is right for a whaling captain to jeopardise that life in the 
active perils of the chase. So Tamerlane’s soldiers often argued with 
tears in their eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be 
carried into the thickest of the fight. 
