- char_end
- 584024
- char_start
- 576198
- chunk_index
- 81
- chunk_total
- 178
- estimated_tokens
- 1957
- source_file_key
- moby-dick
- text
- might have been. The three men were then cut down, all hands were
turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps
clanged as before.
“Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor
was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up,
besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the crew.
Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own
instance they were put down in the ship’s run for salvation. Still, no
sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed,
that mainly at Steelkilt’s instigation, they had resolved to maintain
the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the
ship reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the
speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing—namely,
not to sing out for whales, in case any should be discovered. For,
spite of her leak, and spite of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still
maintained her mast-heads, and her captain was just as willing to lower
for a fish that moment, as on the day his craft first struck the
cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his
berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the
vital jaw of the whale.
“But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of
passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till
all was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the
man who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney
the chief mate’s watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to run more
than half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the rigging, he
insisted, against the express counsel of the captain, upon resuming the
head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two other
circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.
“During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the
bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of
the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship’s side. In
this attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a
considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between
this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his
next trick at the helm would come round at two o’clock, in the morning
of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed. At his
leisure, he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully
in his watches below.
“‘What are you making there?’ said a shipmate.
“‘What do you think? what does it look like?’
“‘Like a lanyard for your bag; but it’s an odd one, seems to me.’
“‘Yes, rather oddish,’ said the Lakeman, holding it at arm’s length
before him; ‘but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven’t enough
twine,—have you any?’
“But there was none in the forecastle.
“‘Then I must get some from old Rad;’ and he rose to go aft.
“‘You don’t mean to go a begging to _him!_’ said a sailor.
“‘Why not? Do you think he won’t do me a turn, when it’s to help
himself in the end, shipmate?’ and going to the mate, he looked at him
quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given
him—neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night an
iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the
Lakeman’s monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock
for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent
helm—nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready
dug to the seaman’s hand—that fatal hour was then to come; and in the
fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and
stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.
“But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody
deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the
avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in
to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have
done.
“It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second
day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe
man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, ‘There
she rolls! there she rolls!’ Jesu, what a whale! It was Moby Dick.
“‘Moby Dick!’ cried Don Sebastian; ‘St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do
whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?’
“‘A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;—but
that would be too long a story.’
“‘How? how?’ cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.
“‘Nay, Dons, Dons—nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get more
into the air, Sirs.’
“‘The chicha! the chicha!’ cried Don Pedro; ‘our vigorous friend looks
faint;—fill up his empty glass!’
“No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.—Now, gentlemen, so
suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the
ship—forgetful of the compact among the crew—in the excitement of the
moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted
his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had been
plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy.
‘The White Whale—the White Whale!’ was the cry from captain, mates, and
harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious to
capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed
askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass,
that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a
living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality
pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out
before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of
the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him,
while Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or
slacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four boats
were lowered, the mate’s got the start; and none howled more fiercely
with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a
stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney
sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat.
And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale’s topmost back.
Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding
foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat
struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the
standing mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale’s slippery back,
the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was
tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck
out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that
veil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But
the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer
between his jaws; and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again,
and went down.
“Meantime, at the first tap of the boat’s bottom, the Lakeman had
slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly
looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific,
downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He
cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick rose
again, with some tatters of Radney’s red woollen shirt, caught in the
teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase again; but the
whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.
“In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port—a savage, solitary
place—where no civilized creature resided.