Moby Dick

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abstinence man; I never drink--"

"Water!" cried the captain; "he never drinks it; it's a sort of fits to
him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on--go on with
the arm story."

"Yes, I may as well," said the surgeon, coolly. "I was about observing,
sir, before Captain Boomer's facetious interruption, that spite of my
best and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the
truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more
than two feet and several inches long. I measured it with the lead line.
In short, it grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it came.
But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is
against all rule"--pointing at it with the marlingspike--"that is the
captain's work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had
that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock some one's brains
out with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. He flies into diabolical