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It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments , but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion . This was the fourth time in my nautical life that I had done the same thing . After the ceremony was concluded upon the present occasion , I felt all the easier ; a stone was rolled away from my heart . Besides , all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection ; a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might be . 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 50 . 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 jeopardize 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 . Therefore he had not solicited a boat’s crew from them , nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head .
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