. 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.
    Now 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.
 

                                   Chapter L

                         Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah

»Who would have thought it, Flask!« cried Stubb. »If I had but 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; but 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, considering 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.
    But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering that with
two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger; considering that
the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties; that
every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril; under these
circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt?
As a general thing, the joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought
not.
    Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of his
entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of the chase, for
the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his orders in person, yet
for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to him as a regular
headsman in the hunt - above all, for Captain Ahab to be supplied with five
extra men, as that same boat's crew, he well knew that such generous conceits
never entered the heads of the owners of the Pequod.
