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 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.