"Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?"

"Spin me the yarn," said Ahab; "how was it?"

"It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line,"
began the Englishman. "I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time.
Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat
fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went
milling and milling round so, that my boat's crew could only trim dish,
by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches
from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white
head and hump, all crows' feet and wrinkles."

"It was he, it was he!" cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his suspended
breath.

"And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin."

"Aye, aye--they were mine--MY irons," cried Ahab, exultingly--"but on!"

"Give me a chance, then," said the Englishman, good-humoredly. "Well,
this old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all afoam
into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!

"Aye, I see!--wanted to part it; free the fast-fish--an old trick--I
know him."

"How it was exactly," continued the one-armed commander, "I do not know;
but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow;
but we didn't know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled on the
line, bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the other whale's;
that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters stood, and
what a noble great whale it was--the noblest and biggest I ever saw,
sir, in my life--I resolved to capture him, spite of the boiling rage
he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or
the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boat's
crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say, I jumped
into my first mate's boat--Mr. Mounttop's here (by the way,
Captain--Mounttop; Mounttop--the captain);--as I was saying, I jumped
into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and gunwale
with mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old
great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir--hearts and souls
alive, man--the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat--both
eyes out--all befogged and bedeadened with black foam--the whale's tail
looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble
steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday, w