At last, news of Moby Dick, communicated to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy amid bloodcurdling tales of mutiny on the high seas.
The Town-Ho sprung a leak as a result of an encounter with a swordfish, who subsequently returned, apparently "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."
A leak in the North Atlantic is a small thing, but in the vast wastes of the Southern Seas it is more serious. And pumping out and repairing the leak brings two sailors on the Town-Ho, Steelkilt and Radney, to a desperate conflict.
Thence to an extended aside about the men of Erie Canal, in which the good Mr. Melville casts the most vile slander against my own native city of Sydney."'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 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.
High drama and derring-do ensue, with deeds of determination, 'subtle chemistry of villany', treachery, perfidy, punishment and revenge.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.
Here is the start ...
The Town-Ho then encounters "a very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster"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.
As to the sad fate of Mr Radney in the jaws of Moby Dick, you will have to read yourself. Suffice to say,
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.
from http://www.enotes.com/moby-dick/picture ... rs-lii-liv
