Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling,
that when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer
thought him otherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to
the quick, with the terrible casualty which had overtaken him.
The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise
popularly ascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the added
moodiness which always afterwards, to the very day of sailing
in the Pequod on the present voyage, sat brooding on his brow.
Nor is it so very unlikely, that far from distrusting his fitness
for another whaling voyage, on account of such dark symptoms,
the calculating people of that prudent isle were inclined
to harbor the conceit, that for those very reasons he was
all the better qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit
so full of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales.
Gnawed within and scorched without, with the infixed,
unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an one,
could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron
and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes.
Or, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated
for that, yet such an one would seem superlatively competent
to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack.
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