Moby Dick

that moment, as on the day his craft first struck the cruising ground;
and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his berth for a boat,
and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw
of the whale.

"But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this
sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel
(at least till all was over) concerning his own proper and private
revenge upon the man who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart.
He was in Radney the chief mate's watch; and as if the infatuated
man sought to run more than half way to meet his doom, after the
scene at the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel
of the captain, upon resuming the head of his watch at night.
Upon this, and one or two other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically
built the plan of his revenge.

"During the night, Radney had an unseaman-like way of sitting
on the bulwarks of the quarterdeck, and leaning his arm upon
the gunwale of the boat which was hoisted up there, a little
above the ship's side.  In this attitude, it was well known,
he sometimes dozed.  There was a considerable vacancy between
the boat and the ship, and down between this was the sea.
Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next trick
at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in the morning
of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed.
At his leisure, he employed the interval in braiding something
very carefully in his watches below.

"'What are you making there?' said a shipmate.

"'What do you think? what does it look like?'

"'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me.'

'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length
before him; 'but I think it will answer.  Shipmate, I haven't
enough twine,--have you any?'

"But there was none in the forecastle.

"'Then I must get some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft.

"'You don't mean to go a begging to him!' said a sailor.

"'Why not?  Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's
to help himself in the end, shipmate?' and going to the mate,
he looked at him quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend
his hammock.  It was given him--neither twine nor lanyard were
seen again; but the next night an iron ball, closely netted,
partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket,
as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow.
Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent helm--
nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready
dug to the seaman's hand--that fatal hour was then to come;
and in the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already
stark and stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.

"But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from
the bloody deed he had planned.  Yet complete revenge he had,
and without being the avenger.  For by a mysterious fatality,
Heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of his hands into
its own the damning thing he would have done.

"It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning
of the second day, when they were washing down the decks,
that a stupid Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains,
all at once shouted out, 'There she rolls! there she rolls!'
Jesu, what a whale!  It was Moby Dick.

"'Moby Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic!  Sir sailor,
but do whales have christenings?  Whom call you Moby Dick?'

"'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;--
but that would be too long a story.'

"'How? how?' cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.

"'Nay, Dons, Dons--nay, nay!  I cannot rehearse that now.
Let me get more into the air, Sirs.'

"'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend
looks faint;--fill up his empty glass!'

"No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.--Now, gentlemen,
so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship--
forgetful of the compact among the crew--in the excitement of the moment,
the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice
for the monster, though for some little time past it had been plainly
beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy.
'The White Whale--the White Whale!' was the cry from captain,
mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours,
were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish;
while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty
of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun,
shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea.
Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events,
as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted.
The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish,
it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance
in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command.