.. < chapter liv 26  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
.. <p 241 >
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 secresy, 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.  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
.. <p 242 >
Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days'
sail westward 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 favored, 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
.. <p 243 >
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
.. <p 244 >
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
.. <p 245 >
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!"

.. <p 246 >
 "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
.. <p 247 >
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
.. <p 248 >
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 mast-heads.  They were both Canallers.  "Canallers!" cried Don Pedro,
"We have seen many whale-ships 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
.. <p 249 >
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
.. <p 250 >
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 back-stay.  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.
.. <p 251 >
 "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 won'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,
.. <p 252 >
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
companion-way.  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
.. <p 253 >
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 a muck 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
.. <p 254 >
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 mizen 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,
.. <p 255 >
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
.. <p 256 >
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
.. <p 257 >
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 rumors, 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
.. <p 258 >
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 foremast-men 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
.. <p 259 >
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
.. <p 260 >
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 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-Fes 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 for 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."
.. <p 261 >
 "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."
.. <p 241n. >
The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head, still
used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.
.. <p 261 >