الفصل الفصل 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 buck-horn 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 imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when he

betrayed this 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 have 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 ’em. 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

uplifted 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 windlass, 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 whale-ships in our

harbours, 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; and 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 patronising 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 friar 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 is

he. 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 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,’ said 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 one 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 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 that he had a good mind to flog them all round—thought, upon the

whole, 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 of 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 first 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 unseamanlike way of sitting on the

bulwarks of the quarter-deck, 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 looks

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, he 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 woollen 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 lightnings 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-Fés in Lima now,’ said one of the company

to another; ‘I fear our sailor friend runs risk 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.’”