Chapter 112 107．versatile and mechanical carpenter

In the chapter above, you heard Captain Ahab order the carpenter to make him a tooth leg. Maybe you can't help but ask: "Who is the carpenter? Why haven't you mentioned it yet? How can a carpenter make artificial legs?" And don't rush to ask so many questions, let me explain it to you carefully. On a whaling ship sailing the world there are other people besides the professional whaling crew. These men are used to maintain the whaling ship and the various chores of the sailors for a period of two or three years. Carpenter is one of them. Everyone on the Pequod was a famous character, even the carpenter.

Although, he is not the kind of god-man who can be recognized from the human group at a glance and can represent human beings, but he is definitely not a mediocre person who makes people look without any spirituality. Like the carpenters on many whaling ships, the old carpenter on the "Pequode" is also a good hand who has experienced many years of rough seas and beaten out of countless risks. It can be imagined that without considerable skills, a carpenter would not be able to stand on a whaling ship. You know, on a whaling ship, the carpenter's responsibilities are not just the work we usually understand, but much bigger than we think.

His most important tool is his clumsy bench. This bench is often placed at the back of the refinery, and there are several vises of different sizes on it, some made of iron and some made of wood. He has to deal with the following daily tasks: Repair broken boats, damaged various wooden utensils. Improve various unusable or inapplicable wooden utensils, such as paddles of boats and so on. Install various required devices on deck and side. What I'm talking about here is just what we usually imagine a carpenter should do according to the routine. In fact, our carpenters have to deal with much more than these, and to a large extent purely irrelevant matters.

If a sling was too large to fit in the hole, the carpenter had to find a way to make it smaller so that the sailors could use it more easily. If a fine bird, which is usually on land, strays into a boat, and is caught, the carpenter makes for it a cage like a dovecot out of the thin bones of a right whale. If a sailor sprained his wrist, the carpenter would make him a rubbing potion. If Stubb wanted to paint all the oars with a vermilion star, the carpenter would have to turn all the oars in the big vice on the bench and paint them the star. If a sailor wanted to wear earrings, the carpenter had to drill his ears.

If a sailor's toothache is too bad, the carpenter has to clamp the guy's teeth with a big vise in his hand, although the guy has already been frightened a little bit involuntarily. Listen, this is the job that a carpenter has to deal with, isn't it all-encompassing, a bit like the chief engineer of the entire ship. In fact, if a carpenter wants to be on the whaling ship, he must master all kinds of skills and know everything about all kinds of trades. Only in this way can he be able to cope with various unexpected events. You know, a whaling ship sails at sea for two or three years, and everything can happen, and many of these things need a carpenter to deal with.

Such was the able old carpenter of the Pequod, doing his duty. He was so silent, but never idle, that some people thought he was a fool. No matter what happened on board, even when the sky was falling, he was always sullen and doing his own work. So he made people suspicious, wondering if he was a person on this boat. He seems to be a little dull, because any personal emotional factors can't affect him, which makes people feel that he is very unreasonable. But sometimes, the old carpenter is also very talkative, can show a kind of quaint humor, and can even say out-of-the-box witty words.

Compared with his behavior, people feel a little strange. I can't tell what is guiding the old carpenter's hands to keep working. It doesn't seem to be a brain, because the old carpenter doesn't seem to have a brain of his own from the beginning. He just relied on the working method he learned from his master, and he worked quite effectively. In a way, the old carpenter is like a machine, a soulless machine, a tireless machine. He is over sixty years old, buzzing, and he is always talking to himself, for fear that he will fall asleep.