431 
THE WHITE WHALE 
matters more directly pertaining to his special business; he was more- 
over unhesitatingly expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both 
useful and capricious. 
The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so mani- 
fold, was his vice-bench; a long, rude, ponderous table furnished with 
several vices of different sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all 
times except when whales were alongside, this bench was securely 
lashed athwartships against the rear of the try-works. 
A belaying-pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole: 
the carpenter claps it into one of his every-ready vices, and straightway 
files it smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage strays on board, 
and is made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of right- whale bone, 
and cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter makes a pagoda- 
looking cage for it. An oarsman sprains his wrist: the carpenter 
concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb longed for vermilion stars to be 
painted upon the blade of his every oar. Screwing each oar in his big 
vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation. 
A sailor takes a fancy to wear sharkbone earrings : the carpenter drills 
his ears. Another has the toothache: the carpenter out pincers, and 
clapping one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there; but the 
poor fellow unmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation; 
whirling round the handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter signs him 
to clap his jaw in that, if he would have him draw the tooth. 
Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent 
and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory; heads he 
deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans. 
But while now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished, and 
with such liveliness of expertness in him, too, all this would seem 
to argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not pre- 
cisely so. For nothing was this man more remarkable, than for a cer- 
tain impersonal stolidity as it were ; impersonal, I say ; for it so shaded 
off into the surrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with 
the general stolidity discernible in the whole visible world; which, 
while pauselessly active in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its 
peace, and ignores you, though you dig foundations for cathedrals. 
Yet was this half-horrible stolidity in him, involving, too, as it ap- 
