to work so much by reason or by instinct,
or simply because he had been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all
these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous
literal process. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one,
must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was like one of
those unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in parvo, Sheffield
contrivances, assuming the exterior - though a little swelled - of a common
pocket-knife; but containing, not only blades of various sizes, but also
screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers, nail-filers,
countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted to use the carpenter for a
screw-driver, all they had to do was to open that part of him, and the screw was
fast: or if for tweezers, take him up by the legs, and there they were.
    Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter, was,
after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a common soul in
him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did its duty. What that
was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no
telling. But there it was; and there it had abided for now some sixty years or
more. And this it was, this same unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him;
this it was, that kept him a great part of the time soliloquising; but only like
an unreasoning wheel, which also hummingly soliloquises; or rather, his body was
a sentry-box and this soliloquiser on guard there, and talking all the time to
keep himself awake.
 

                                 Chapter CVIII

                             Ahab and the Carpenter

                          The Deck - First Night-Watch
 
  (Carpenter standing before his vice-bench, and by the light of two lanterns
 busily filing the ivory joist for the leg, which joist is firmly fixed in the
  vice. Slabs of ivory, leather straps, pads, screws, and various tools of all
sorts lying about the bench. Forward, the red flame of the forge is seen, where
                          the blacksmith is at work.)
 
Drat the file, and drat the bone! That is hard which should be soft, and that is
soft which should be hard. So we go, who file old jaws and shin-bones. Let 's
try another. Ay, now, this works better (sneezes). Halloa