CHAPTER 54

  The Town-Ho's Story

  (As told at the Golden Inn)

  The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about

there, is much like some noted four corners of a great highway,

where you meet more travellers than in any other part.

  It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another

homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned

almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us

strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White

Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho's

story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain

wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of

God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter

circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may

be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never

reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of

the story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was

the private property of three confederate white seamen of that ship,

one of whom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish

injunctions of secrecy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in

his sleep, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was

wakened he could not well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent

an influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who

came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to

call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the

secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's

main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with

the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this

strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record.

  *The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the

mast-head, still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos

terrapin.

  For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once

narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one

saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden

Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian,

were on the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding

questions they occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the

time.

  "Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am

about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of

Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days' sail

eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere

to the northward of the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps

according to daily usage, it was observed that she made more water

in her hold than common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her,

gentlemen. But the captain, having some unusual reason for believing

that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore

being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then considered

at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find it after

searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy

weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners

working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck

came; more days went by and not only was the leak yet undiscovered,

but it sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the

captain, making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among

the islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired.

  "Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest

chance favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by

the way, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically

relieved at them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep

the ship free; never mind if the leak should double on her. In

truth, well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very

prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in

perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the least

fatality, had it not been for the brutal overbearing of Radney, the

mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked vengeance of

Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo.

  "'Lakeman!- Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?'

said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.

  "On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but- I crave your

courtesy- may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now,

gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well nigh as

large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to

far Manilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America,

had yet been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions

popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing

aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours,- Erie, and Ontario,

and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan,- possess an ocean-like

expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of

its rimmed varieties of races and of climes. They contain round

archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do;

in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the

Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous

territorial colonies from the East, dotted all round their banks; here

and there are frowned upon by batteries, and by the goat-like craggy

guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the fleet thunderings of naval

victories; at intervals, they yield their beaches to wild

barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry

wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and

unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of

kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric

beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to

Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and

Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the

full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the

steamer, and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and

dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave; they

know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however inland,

they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking

crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean

born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any.

And for Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the

lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after

life he had long followed our austere Atlantic and your

contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social

quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of

buckhorn handled Bowie-knives. Yet was this Nantucketer a man with

some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a mariner, who though a

sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only

tempered by that common decency of human recognition which is the

meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been

retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved so thus

far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt- but,

gentlemen, you shall hear.

  "It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing

her prow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho's leak seemed again

increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps

every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like

our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping their

whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the

officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the

probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again

remember it, on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom.

Nor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward,

gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at

their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable

length! that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast, or if

any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky

vessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters, some

really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel a little

anxious.

  "Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was

found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern

manifested by several of her company; especially by Radney the mate.

He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew,

and every way expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose,

was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of

nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless,

unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently

gentlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this imagine, solicitude about

the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it was only

on account of his being a part owner in her. So when they were working

that evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small

gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood with their

feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear as

any mountain spring, gentlemen- that bubbling from the pumps ran

across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee

scupper-holes.

  "Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this

conventional world of ours- watery or otherwise; that when a person

placed in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very

significantly his superior in general pride of manhood, straightway

against that man he conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness;

and if he had a chance he will pull down and pulverize that

subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it. Be this

conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a

tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flowing golden

beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's snorting

charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him, gentlemen, which

had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to

Charlemagne's father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as

hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and

Steelkilt knew it.

  "Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with

the rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went

on with his gay banterings.

  "'Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin,

one of ye, and let's have a taste. By the Lord, it's worth bottling! I

tell ye what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had best

cut away his part of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that

sword-fish only began the job; he's come back again with a gang of

ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the

whole posse of 'em are now hard at work cutting and slashing at the

bottom; making improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now,

I'd tell him to jump overboard and scatter They're playing the devil

with his estate, I can tell him. But he's a simple old soul,- Rad, and

a beauty too. Boys, they say the rest of his property is invested in

looking-glasses. I wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the

model of his nose.'

  "'Damn your eyes! what's that pump stopping for?' roared Radney,

pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk. 'Thunder away at it!'

  'Aye, aye, sir,' said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. 'Lively,

boys, lively, now!' And with that the pump clanged like fifty

fire-engines; the men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that

peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest

tension of life's utmost energies.

  "Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman

went forward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his

face fiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat

from his brow. Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that

possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporeally

exasperated state, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably

striding along the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and

sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive

matters consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large.

  "Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of

household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly

attended to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case of

ships actually foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the

inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in

seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing

their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the

prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides,

it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho that had been divided into

gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being the most athletic seaman

of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain of one of

the gangs; consequently he should have been freed from any trivial

business not connected with truly nautical duties, such being the case

with his comrades. I mention all these particulars so that you may

understand exactly how this affair stood between the two men.

  "But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost

as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had

spat in his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will

understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman

fully comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat

still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate's

malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in

him and the slow-match silently burning along towards them; as he

instinctively saw all this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness

to stir up the deeper passionateness in any already ireful being- a

repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men even

when aggrieved- this nameless phantom feeling, gentlemen, stole over

Steelkilt.

  "Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily

exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that sweeping

the deck was not his business, and he would not do it. And then,

without at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads, as

the customary sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done

little or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied, with an oath, in a

most domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his

command; meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an

unlifted cooper's club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near

by.

  "Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the

pumps, for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the

sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but

somehow still smothering the conflagration within him, without

speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the

incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face,

furiously commanding him to do his bidding.

  "Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windless,

steadily followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately

repeated his intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his

forbearance had not the slightest effect, by an awful and

unspeakable intimation with his twisted hand he warned off the foolish

and infatuated man; but it was to no purpose. And in this way the

two went once slowly round the windlass; when, resolved at last no

longer to retreat, bethinking him that he had now forborne as much

as comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused on the hatches and

thus spoke to the officer:

  "'Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to

yourself.' But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him,

where the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an

inch of his teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable

maledictions. Retreating not the thousandth part of an inch;

stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his glance,

Steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly

drawing it back, told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his

cheek he (Steelkilt) would murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had

been branded for the slaughter by the gods. Immediately the hammer

touched the cheek; the next instant the lower jaw of the mate was

stove in his head; he fell on the hatch spouting blood like a whale.

  "Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays

leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their

mastheads. They were both Canallers.

  "'Canallers!' cried Don Pedro. 'We have seen many whaleships in

our harbors, but never heard of your Canallers. Pardon: who and what

are they?'

  "'Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal.

You must have heard of it.'

  "'Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and

hereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous North.'

  "'Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha's very fine; and

ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such

information may throw side-light upon my story.'

  "For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire

breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and

most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps,

and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by

billiard-room and bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great

forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by

happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of

those noble Mohawk counties; especially, by rows of snow-white

chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one

continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. There's

your true Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your pagans; where you

ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung shadow, and the

snug patronizing lee of churches. For by some curious fatality, as

it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that they ever

encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most abound

in holiest vicinities.

  "'Is that a fair passing?' said Don Pedro, looking downwards into

the crowded plazza, with humorous concern.

  "'Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in

Lima,' laughed Don Sebastian. 'Proceed, Senor.'

  "'A moment! Pardon!' cried another of the company. 'In the name of

all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we

have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting

present Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not

bow and look surprised: you know the proverb all along this coast-

"Corrupt as Lima." It but bears out your saying, too; churches more

plentiful than billiard-tables, and for ever open-and "Corrupt as

Lima." So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the

blessed evangelist, St. Mark!- St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup!

Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out again.'

  "Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller

would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely

wicked he is. Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his

green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with

his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny

deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish

guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and

gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling

innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart visage

and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his

own canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I

thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often

one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that

at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait,

as to plunder a wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of

this canal life is, is emphatically evinced by this; that our wild

whale-fishery contains so many of its most finished graduates, and

that scarce any race of mankind, except Sydney men, are so much

distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at all diminish the

curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys

and young men born along its line, the probationary life of the

Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a

Christian corn-field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the

most barbaric seas.

  "'I see! I see!' impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his

chicha upon his silvery ruffles. 'No need to travel! The world's one

Lima. I had thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations

were cold and holy as the hills.- But the story.'

  "I had left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay.

Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior

mates and the four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. But

sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed

into the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it towards the

forecastle. Others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt,

and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of harm's way, the

valiant captain danced up and down with a whale-pike, calling upon his

officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke him along to

the quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran close up to the revolving

border of the confusion, and prying into the heart of it with his

pike, sought to prick out the object of his resentment. But

Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them all; they

succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily slewing about

three or four large casks in a line with the windlass, these

sea-Parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade.

  "'Come out of that, ye pirates!' roared the captain, now menacing

them with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward.

'Come out of that, ye cut-throats!'

  "Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down

there, defied the worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain

to understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt's) death would be the

signal for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands. Fearing in his

heart lest this might prove but too true, the captain a little

desisted, but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to

their duty.

  "'Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?' demanded their

ringleader.

  "'Turn to! turn to!- I make no promise; to your duty! Do you want to

sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!' and he

once more raised a pistol.

  "'Sink the ship?' cried Steelkilt. 'Aye, let her sink. Not a man

of us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against

us. What say ye, men?' turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was

their response.

  "The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping

his eye on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:-

'It's not our fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his

hammer away; it was boy's business; he might have known me before

this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a

finger here against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in

the forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties.

Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a fool;

forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we're

your men; but we won't be flogged.'

  "'Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!'

  "'Look ye, now,' cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards

him, 'there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have

shipped for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can

claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don't want

a row; it's not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to

work, but we won't be flogged.'

  "'Turn to!' roared the Captain.

  "Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:- 'I tell you

what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a

shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us;

but till you say the word about not flogging us, we don't do a

hand's turn.'

  "'Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there

till ye're sick of it. Down ye go.'

  "'Shall we?' cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were

against it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded

him down into their dark den, growlingly disappearing, like bears into

a cave.

  "As the Lakeman's bare head was just level with the planks, the

Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over

the slide of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and

loudly called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock

belonging to the companionway.

  Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something

down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them- ten in

number- leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained

neutral.

  "All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers,

forward and aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore

hatchway; at which last place it was feared the insurgents might

emerge, after breaking through the bulkhead below. But the hours of

darkness passed in peace; the men who still remained at their duty

toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals

through the dreary night dismally resounded through the ship.

  "At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck,

summoned the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water

was then lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit

were tossed after it; when again turning the key upon them and

pocketing it, the Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every

day for three days this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a

confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary

summons was delivered; and suddenly four men burst up from the

forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to. The fetid closeness

of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of

ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at discretion.

Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the rest, but

Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling and

betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of

the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below

that sought to restrain them. Only three were left.

  "'Better turn to, now?' said the Captain with a heartless jeer.

  "'Shut us up again, will ye!' cried Steelkilt.

  "'Oh certainly,' the Captain, and the key clicked.

  "It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of

seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that

had last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as

black as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to

the two Canallers, thus far apparently of mind with him, to burst

out of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed

with their keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements

with a handle at each end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the

taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation possible, seize

the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said, whether they

joined him or not. That was the last night he should spend in that

den. But the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other

two; they swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad

thing, for anything in short but a surrender. And what was more,

they each insisted upon being the first man on deck, when the time

to make the rush should come. But to this their leader as fiercely

objected, reserving that priority for himself; particularly as his two

comrades would not yield, the one to the other, in the matter; and

both of them could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one

man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these

miscreants must come out.

  "Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own

separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece

of treachery, namely: to be the foremost in breaking out, in order

to be the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to

surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such

conduct might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination

still to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle

chemistry of villany, mixed their before secret treacheries

together; and when their leader fell into a doze, verbally opened

their souls to each other in three sentences; and bound the sleeper

with cords, and gagged him with cords; and shrieked out for the

Captain at midnight.

  "Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he

and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle.

In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the

still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his

perfidious allies, who at once claimed the honor of securing a man who

had been fully ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and

dragged along the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were

seized up into the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and

there they hung till morning. 'Damn ye,' cried the Captain, pacing

to and fro before them, 'the vultures would not touch ye, ye

villains!'

  "At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had

rebelled from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the

former he had a good mind to flog them all round- thought, upon the

while, he would do so- he ought to- justice demanded it; but for the

present, considering their timely surrender, he would let them go with

a reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the vernacular.

  "'But as for you, ye carrion rogues,' turning to the three men in

the rigging- 'for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;' and,

seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the

two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their

heads sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.

  "'My wrist is sprained with ye!' he cried, at last; 'but there is

still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up.

Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for

himself.'

  "For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of

his cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said

in a sort of hiss, 'What I say is this- and mind it well- if you

flog me, I murder you!'

  "'Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me'- and the Captain drew

off with the rope to strike.

  "'Best not,' hissed the Lakeman.

  "'But I must,'- and the rope was once more drawn back for the

stroke.

  "Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the

Captain; who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the

deck rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his

rope, said, 'I won't do it- let him go- cut him down: d'ye hear?'

  But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale

man, with a bandaged head, arrested them- Radney the chief mate.

Ever since the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning,

hearing the tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had

watched the whole scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he

could hardly speak; but mumbling something about his being willing and

able to do what the captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope

and advanced to his pinioned foe.

  "'You are a coward!' hissed the Lakeman.

  "'So I am, but take that.' The mate was in the very act of striking,

when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing

no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt's threat, whatever

that might have been. The three men were then cut down, all hands were

turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps

clanged as before.

  "Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a

clamor was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors

running up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort

with the crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back,

so at their own instance they were put down in the ship's run for

salvation. Still, no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On

the contrary, it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation,

they had resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all

orders to the last, and, when the ship reached port, desert her in a

body. But in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage, they all

agreed to another thing- namely, not to sing out for whales, in case

any should be discovered. For, spite her leak, and spite of all her

other perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast-heads, and her

captain was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on the

day his craft struck the cruising ground; and Radney the mate was

quite as ready to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged

mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale.

  "But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of

passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till

all was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the

man who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney

the chief mate's watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to run

more than half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the rigging,

he insisted, against the express counsel of the captain, upon resuming

the head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two other

circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.

  "During the night, Radney had an unseaman-like way of sitting on the

bulwarks of the quarterdeck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of

the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side.

In this attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a

considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between

this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his

next trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in the morning

of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed. At his

leisure, he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully

in his watches below.

  "'What are you making there?' said a shipmate.

  "'What do you think? what does it look like?'

  "'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me.'

  'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length

before him; 'but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough

twine,- have you any?'

  "But there was none in the forecastle.

  "'Then I must get some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft.

  "'You don't mean to go a begging to him!' said a sailor.

  "'Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help

himself in the end, shipmate?' and going to the mate, he looked at him

quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was

given him- neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next

night an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of

the Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his

hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent

helm- nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always

ready dug to the seaman's hand- that fatal hour was then to come;

and in the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already

stark and stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.

  "But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the

bloody deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without

being the avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself

seemed to step in to take out of his hands into its own the damning

thing he would have done.

  "It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the

second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid

Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted

out, 'There she rolls! there she rolls!' Jesu, what a whale! It was

Moby Dick.

  "'Moby Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but

do whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?'

  "'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster,

Don;- but that would be too long a story.'

  "'How? how?' cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.

  "'Nay, Dons, Dons- nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me

get more into the air, Sirs.'

  "'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend

faint;- fill up his empty glass!'

  "No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.- Now, gentlemen,

so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship-

forgetful of the compact among the crew- in the excitement of the

moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted

his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had

been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a

phrensy. 'The White Whale- the White Whale!' was the cry from captain,

mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all

anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged

crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast

milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and

glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a

strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events, as if

verily mapped out before the world itself was charted. The mutineer

was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his

duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in the

prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command.

Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got the

start; and none howled more fiercely with delight than did

Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their

harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow.

He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged

cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing loath,

his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent

two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as

against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing

mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the

boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was

tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck

out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through

that veil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick.

But the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer

between his jaws; and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong

again, and went down.

  "Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had

slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly

looking on, lie thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific,

downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line.

He cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick

rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woolen shirt, caught

in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase

again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.

  "In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port- a savage, solitary

place- where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the

Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately

deserted among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a

large double war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other

harbor.

  "The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain

called upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of

heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting

vigilance over their dangerous allies was this small band of whites

necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard

work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea,

they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not

put off with them in so heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with

his officers, he anchored the ship as far off shore as possible;

loaded and ran out his two cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets

on the poop; and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at

their peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best

whale-boat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five

hundred miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew.

  "On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which

seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from

it; but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of

Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under water. The

captain presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked

war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the

pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles

and foam.

  "'What do you want of me?' cried the captain.

  "'Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?' demanded

Steelkilt; 'no lies.'

  "'I am bound to Tahiti for more men.'

  "'Very good. Let me board you a moment- I come in peace.' With

that he leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the

gunwale, stood face to face with the captain.

  "'Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after

me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on

yonder island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightning

strike me!'

  "'A pretty scholar,' laughed the Lakeman. 'Adios, Senor!' and

leaping into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.

  "Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the

roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due

time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck

befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were

providentially in want of precisely that number of men which the

sailor headed. They embarked, and so for ever got the start of their

former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal

retribution.

  "Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat

arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more

civilized Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering

a small native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and

finding all right there, again resumed his cruisings.

  "Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island

of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses

to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that

destroyed him.

  "'Are you through?' said Don Sebastian, quietly.

  "'I am, Don.'

  "'Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own

convictions, this your story is in substance really true? It is so

passing wonderful! Did you get it from an unquestionable source?

Bear with me if I seem to press.'

  "'Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don

Sebastian's suit,' cried the company, with exceeding interest.

  "'Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn,

gentlemen?'

  "'Nay,' said Don Sebastian; 'but I know a worthy priest near by, who

will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well

advised? this may grow too serious.'

  "'Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?'

  "'Though there are no Auto-da-Fe's in Lima now,' said one of the

company to another; 'I fear our sailor friend runs risks of the

archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no

need of this.'

  "'Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg

that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists

you can.'

  'This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,' said Don

Sebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.

  "'Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the

light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.

  "'So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have told ye,

gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to

be true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I

have seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.'"