Therefore he had not solicited a boat's crew
from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head.
Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching
all that matter. Until Cabaco's published discovery,
the sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure when,
after being a little while out of port, all hands had concluded
the customary business of fitting the whaleboats for service;
when some time after this Ahab was now and then found bestirring
himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his own hands
for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even
solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when
the line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow:
when all this was observed in him, and particularly his solicitude
in having an extra coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat,
as if to make it better withstand the pointed pressure of his
ivory limb; and also the anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping
the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes called,
the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing the knee
against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was
observed how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary
knee fixed in the semi-circular depression in the cleat,
and with the carpenter's chisel gouged out a little here
and straightened it a little there; all these things, I say,
had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time.
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