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 foremastmen 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