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,
..
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
..
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
..
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,
..
a pale man, with a bandaged head, arrested them --Radney the chief mate. Ever
since the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing the
tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the whole
scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak; but
mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what the captain
dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to his pinioned foe.
"You are a coward!" hissed the Lakeman. "So I am, but take that." The mate
was in the very act of striking, when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm.
He paused: and then pausing no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt's
threat, whatever that might have been. The three men were then cut down,
all hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron
pumps clanged as before. Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired
below, a clamor was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors
running up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the
crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their
own instance they were put down in the ship's run for salvation. Still, no
sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed, that
mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain the
strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship
reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the speediest end
to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing --namely, not to sing out for
whales, in case any should be discovered. For, spite of her leak, and spite
of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast-heads, and
her captain was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on the
day his craft first struck the cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite
as ready to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to
gag in death the vital jaw of the whale. But though the Lakeman had induced
the seamen to adopt this sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his
own counsel (at least till all was over) concerning his own proper and
private revenge upon the man who had stung him in the ventricles
..
of his heart. He was in Radney the chief mate's watch; and as if the
infatuated man sought to run more than half way to meet his doom, after the
scene at the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of the captain,
upon resuming the head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two
other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.
During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the
bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of the
boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side. In this
attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a considerable
vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between this was the sea.
Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next trick at the helm
would come round at two o'clock, in the morning of the third day from that in
which he had been betrayed. At his leisure, he employed the interval in
braiding something very carefully in his watches below. "What are you making
there?" said a shipmate. "What do you think? what does it look like?"
"Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me." "Yes,
rather oddish," said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length before him;
"but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough twine, --have you
any?" But there was none in the forecastle. "Then I must get some from old
Rad;" and he rose to go aft. "You don't mean to go a begging to him!" said
a sailor. "Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help
himself in the end, shipmate?" and going to the mate, he looked at him
quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given him
--neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night an iron ball,
closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket,
as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours
after, his trick at the silent helm --nigh to the man who was apt to doze over
the grave always ready dug to the seaman's hand --that fatal hour was then to
come; and in
..
the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and
stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in. But, gentlemen, a fool
saved the would-be murderer from the bloody deed he had planned. Yet complete
revenge he had, and without being the avenger. For by a mysterious fatality,
Heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of his hands into its own the
damning thing he would have done. It was just between daybreak and sunrise of
the morning of the second day, when they were washing down the decks, that
a stupid Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once
shouted out, "There she rolls! there she rolls!" Jesu, what a whale! It
was Moby Dick. "Moby Dick!" cried Don Sebastian; "St. Dominic! Sir sailor,
but do whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?" "A very white,
and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don; --but that would be too long
a story." "How? how!" cried all the young Spaniards, crowding. "Nay, Dons,
Dons --nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get more into the air,
Sirs." "The chicha! the chicha!" cried Don Pedro; "our vigorous friend
looks faint; --fill up his empty glass!" No need, gentlemen; one moment, and
I proceed. --Now, gentlemen, so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within
fifty yards of the ship --forgetful of the compact among the crew --in the
excitement of the moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and
involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster, though for some little time
past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now
a phrensy. "The White Whale --the White Whale!" was the cry from captain,
mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful 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
..
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
..
band of whites necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the
hard work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea,
they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with
them in so heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he
anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two
cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the
Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with him, and
setting the sail of his best whale-boat, steered straight before the wind for
Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew.
On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed to
have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it; but the
savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to
heave to, or he would run him under water. the captain presented a pistol.
With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him
to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he
would bury him in bubbles and foam. "What do you want of me? cried the
captain. "Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?" demanded
Steelkilt; "no lies." "I am bound to Tahiti for more men." "Very good. Let
me board you a moment --I come in peace." With that he leaped from the canoe,
swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale, stood face to face with the
captain. "Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after
me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder
island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightnings strike me!"
"A pretty scholar," laughed the Lakeman."Adios, Senor!" and leaping into the
sea, he swam back to his comrades. Watching the boat till it was fairly
beached, and drawn up to the roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail
again, and in due time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination.
There, luck befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and
were providentially in want of precisely that number
..
of men which the sailor headed. They embarked; and so for ever got the start
of their former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal
retribution. Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat
arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized
Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small native
schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all right there,
again resumed his cruisings. Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know;
but upon the island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea
which refuses to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale
that destroyed him. "Are you through?" said Don Sebastian, quietly. "I am,
Don." "Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,
this 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."
..
"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."
..
The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head, still
used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.
..
.. < chapter lv 7 OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES >
I shall ere long
paint to you as well as one can without canvas, something like the true form
of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in his own
absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whale-ship so that he can be
fairly stepped upon there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to
advert to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the
present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to
set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all
wrong. It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For ever
since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble panellings of
temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields, medallions, cups, and
coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of chain-armor like Saladin's, and a
helmeted head like St. George's; ever since then has something of the same
sort of license prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of the whale,
but in many scientific presentations of him. Now, by all odds, the most
ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to be the whale's, is to be found
in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain
that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the
trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages
before any of them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some
sort our noble profession
..
of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred
to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of
Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But
though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail
of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more
like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms of the true
whale's majestic flukes. But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great
Christian painter's portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the
antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda
from the sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model of such a
strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in
his own Perseus Descending, make out one whit better. The huge corpulence
of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing one
inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended tusked
mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors'
Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower. Then, there are the
Prodromus whales of the old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as depicted
