402 
MOBY DICK; OR 
hang myself. Any way, for the present, I’ll quit Pip’s vicinity. I 
can stand the rest, for they have plain wits; but he’s too crazy-witty 
for my sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering.” 
“Here’s the ship’s navel, this doubloon here, and they are all on fire 
to unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what’s the consequence ? 
Then again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught’s nailed 
to the mast it’s a sign that things grow desperate. Ha, ha ! old Ahab ! 
the White Whale; he’ll nail ye! This is a pine tree. My father, in 
old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and found a silver 
ring grown over in it; some old darkey’s wedding-ring. How did it 
get there? And so they’ll say one day, when they come to fish up 
this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters 
for the shabby bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious gold! the 
green miser’ll hoard ye soon!” 
CHAPTEE XCIX 
LEG AND ARM 
THE PEQUOD OF NANTUCKET MEETS THE SAMUEL ENDERBY 
OF LONDON 
“Ship, ahoy ! Hast seen the White Whale ?” 
So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colours, 
bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was 
standing in his hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to 
the stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat’s 
bow. He was a darkly tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, 
of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung 
round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of his 
jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar’s surcoat. 
“Hast seen the White Whale ?” 
“See you this ?” and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden 
it, he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone terminating in a 
wooden head like a mallet. 
“Man my boat!” cried Ahab impetuously, and tossing about the oars 
near him — “Stand by to lower !” 
