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 imagine, 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 ’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 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; 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
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 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 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,” 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 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
that 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 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 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 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 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.”
