Not long after the Goney crossing, the Pequod meets another homeward whaleman, the Town-Ho, manned mostly by Polynesians, and the short gam brings strong news of Moby Dick that stirs the voyage even before the full tale is told. Some aboard learn a darker thread too, a secret about Radney and divine judgment linked to the white whale, passed from Town-Ho seamen to Tashtego under vows of secrecy until he sleep-talks it forward of the main-mast while Captain Ahab and his mates never hear what the forecastle knows. Ishmael later puts the whole affair on record in the style he used at Lima on a saint's eve, smoking with Spanish friends on the Golden Inn piazza while Don Pedro and Sebastian interrupt with questions like an audience testing the sailor.
Two years before that evening, the Town-Ho leaked in the Pacific north of the Line after a suspected sword-fish wound, yet her captain kept cruising for promised luck while pumps ran at easy intervals until the leak grew and he finally ran for an island repair. On the passage Radney, the Vineyard mate and part owner, showed anxious haste with sails while Steelkilt, a golden-bearded Lakeman from Buffalo and captain of a pump gang, mocked the leak as carpenters cutting Rad's investment, and when Radney roared for more pumping Steelkilt answered merry as a cricket until the crew gasped at life's full tension. Radney already hated Steelkilt's open pride, and the pump banter was only the surface of a mate who would pull down any tower that made him feel small.
What possessed Radney then was worse than pump work: after brutal labor he ordered Steelkilt to sweep pig filth from the deck, boys' work beneath a gang leader, and when Steelkilt refused and pointed to idle lads Radney advanced with a cooper's hammer. Steelkilt sat through forbearance, retreated once around the windlass so witnesses could see who hunted whom, then stood on the hatches and said he would not obey and Radney must take the hammer away or look to himself, but the hammer grazed his cheek and Steelkilt stove the mate's jaw so blood spouted like a whale. Melville pauses for a long digression on Erie Canallers and Don Pedro deciding the world's one Lima, but the story returns as mates and harpooneers crowd Steelkilt until Canallers drag him toward a forecastle barricade of casks.
Steelkilt patrolled that barricade insisting the crew would not turn to unless the captain swore off flogging, while the captain answered only Turn to and padlocked ten men below until hunger peeled some mutineers away and Steelkilt's own allies gagged him in sleep to buy pardon. All three ringleaders hung in the mizzen rigging like quarters of meat while the captain flogged two traitors and drew rope to flog Steelkilt until a whisper inaudible to the deck stayed his hand, though bandaged Radney still flogged him anyway. Steelkilt then hid revenge in a netted iron ball he braided after borrowing twine from Radney himself, while the crew agreed to obey orders and reach port but not to sing out for whales so the leaking voyage might end quietly, even though Radney still meant to hunt with his bandaged mouth the moment any fish appeared.
A stupid Teneriffe man broke that pact at dawn and shouted Moby Dick fifty yards off, so boats lowered in frenzy and Radney's boat got fast first with Steelkilt as bowsman pulling him toward the whale's back until the boat struck and spilled the bandaged mate into the sea where the white whale seized him in a maelstrom. Steelkilt slackened line, cut it, and watched Moby Dick rise with tatters of Radney's red shirt in its teeth while heaven, not his iron ball, finished the feud he had planned. Deserters followed Steelkilt among palms and into yoked war-canoes, the captain later anchored with cannon on the poop and rowed to Tahiti under a forced oath on an island beach, and Steelkilt reached France ahead of any legal retribution while Radney's widow on Nantucket still dreams of the whale that destroyed him.
When the Dons at the Golden Inn doubt a tale so passing wonderful, Ishmael asks for the largest Evangelists he can touch and swears on his honor that the story is true in substance and great items because he trod the ship, knew the crew, and has spoken with Steelkilt since Radney died, sealing public gam news and secret jaw together as witnessed history rather than dock rumor or barroom invention. The chapter leaves Ahab ignorant of the thread that would explain why some hands treat Moby Dick as judgment, and it asks whether you document a warning while witnesses watch or keep planning the blow you hope something else will throw for you on the water.
Coming Up in Chapter 55
Before he will paint the whale as a whaleman sees it, moored alongside and solid enough to step on, Ishmael turns on the pictures landsmen still trust. He means to prove them wrong. The oldest errors, he suspects, sit in Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures, where inventive carvers put the whale on temple panels, shields, and cups.
