|
Table of Contents
Chapter 54
THE TOWN-HO'S
STORY
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 ..
2 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 ..
3 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 ..
4 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 ..
5 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 ..
6 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!" ..
7 "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 ..
8 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 ..
9 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
..
10 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 ..
11 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. ..
12 "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, ..
13 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 ..
14 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 ..
15 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, ..
16 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 ..
17 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 ..
18 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
..
19 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 ..
20 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 ..
21 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." ..
22 "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." ..
23 The ancient
whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head, still used by
whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin. ..
.
|
