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must very soon drown and follow it; and how, that equally dreading to keep the thing near him, he at last hung it aloft from the topmast-stay; where yet it was suspended, bandaged over and over in cerements . . .
                     “Now, which was Samoa? The dead arm swinging high as Haman? Or the living trunk below? Was the arm severed from the body, or the body from the arm? The residual part of Samoa was alive, and therefore we say it was he. But which of the writhing sections of a ten times severed worm, is the worm proper?”
    The fury lingers, contorting, aggravating . . .
               “Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung.”
    and there was the woman in the mental hospital, brought onto the platform in the lecture hall to demonstrate for the medical students, of which I was one:—she suffered with a compulsion to strip her ragged clothes, and over and over to lash herself . . .
    The anger quiets a little, becoming sardonic, and then wrying into a smile. Again, there is Ahab:
               “. . . for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health.”
    And Melville himself, reading of a writer whose work was presumed to be influenced by his illness, makes a marginal comment:
               “So is every one influenced—the robust, the weak, all constitutions—by the very fibre of the flesh, & chalk of the bone. We are what we were made.”

THREE
    Rising, I turn from the desk, and begin to walk, without aim, but confined by the structure of the attic itself. I think again of the infant Melville, held motionless through a brain-caking hiatus, before his delivery; and then of myself, and of the medical data regarding Talipes:
    The notion that heredity may not be a factor; that, more likely, clubfoot results from the maintenance of a strained position in the uterus, or entanglement with the cord, or interlocking of the feet . . .
    And further:
               “Equinus— The heel cord and the posterior structures of the leg are contracted, holding the foot in plantarflection. The arch of the foot is abnormally elevated into cavus and weight is borne on the ball of the foot. In infancy, correction may be accomplished by successive plasters gradually forcing the foot into dorsiflexion. It is extremely important that the cavus, or high arch, be corrected before the cord is lengthened. It may be necessary to sever the contracted structures on the sole of the foot. These consist principally of the plantar fascia and short toe flexors. These structures may be divided subcutaneously. After the cavus deformity has been completely corrected, the heel cord may be lengthened by tenotomy or successive plaster .”
               “Valgus— In early infancy, the foot should be manipulated daily by the mother, twisting it into a position of adduction and inversion. A light aluminum splint should be worn day and night to maintain correction. . . . After care consists in the wearing of a Thomas heel and special exercises to develop the anticus, posticus and toe flexors. ”
    I have observed these operations and manipulations, performed on others; but in my own case, things being as they were, none of this was done.
    The westward end of the attic, farthest removed from the chimney, is cold, and I hear the rain against the side of the house. I turn, and amble back to the desk.
               “I was struck with the singular position he maintained. Upon each side of the Pequod’s quarter deck,