So that no white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid out--which might hardly come to pass, so he muttered--then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole.
So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood.

It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale's jaw.

"Aye, he was dismasted off Japan," said the old Gay-Head Indian once; "but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it.

He has a quiver of 'em." I was struck with the singular posture he maintained.

Upon each side of the Pequod's quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank.
His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship's ever-pitching prow.