Now, it is no very easy matter for anybody--
except those who are almost hourly used to it, like whalemen--
to clamber up a ship's side from a boat on the open sea;
for the great swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks,
and then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson.
So, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being
altogether unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now
found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again;
hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height he could hardly
hope to attain.
It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward
circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang
from his luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or
exasperated Ahab. And in the present instance, all this was heightened
by the sight of the two officers of the strange ship, leaning over
the side, by the perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there,
and swinging towards him a pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes;
for at first they did not seem to bethink them that a one-legged
man must be too much of a cripple to use their sea bannisters.
But this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the strange captain,
observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, "I see, I see!--
avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle.
Pages:
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713