Chapter XLII: The "count De Maurepas," Alias (2)

The mutiny subsided on the 16th of May, when Parliament passed an act to raise the seamen's wages, and the royal pardon was bestowed on the mutineers; not, however, before some sacrifice of human life had ensued, as Admiral Colpoys, on the recommencement of the mutiny on board the _London_, had ordered the marines to fire on the people, and three seamen fell. The funeral of these unfortunates was described to us as a singularly impressive and touching spectacle. The townspeople were fearful of some violence or riot on the part of the sailors when they landed to bury their dead, and consequently closed their shutters and retired into their houses. The mournful procession moved therefore through deserted and silent streets on its way to the village church-yard, in which the victims were to be interred. But there was no cause for alarm. The men walked silently and solemnly, two and two, after their slain comrades, a stern, quiet sorrow legible on their weather-beaten faces; and nothing could exceed the reverence and propriety of their conduct beside the grave. It is a quiet, pretty village church-yard in which these most pardonable rebels have their resting-place, not far from which is the large grave where three hundred bodies of those who perished in the _Royal George_ are buried.

One can scarcely forbear wondering at the little real mischief which proceeded from this alarming mutiny. It afforded, on the whole, a noble display of the principal characteristics of the British seaman--the frolic-spirit peculiar to him manifesting itself even when he is most sadly and seriously in earnest. A captain of marines, who was especially the object of the mutineers' aversion, was brought on shore by them, and compelled to parade up the High-street to the "Rogue's March," which was drummed before him. He was a tall, gaunt old man, with a singularly long neck. The day after his expulsion from his ship, the crew sent a man to his house with a message, ordering him to "come on board again and be hanged!" The unpopular veteran sent back his compliments; but considering his throat unbecomingly long _naturally_, he did not wish to have it stretched: he declined, therefore, accepting their invitation. The men went away laughing. The people and the times were both extraordinary.

WOMAN'S OFFICES AND INFLUENCE.

BY PROF. J. H. AGNEW, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

Ours is an age of stirring life, an age of notions and novelties, of invention and enterprise, of steam-motives and telegraph-wires. The ocean, for passage, has become a river. The air a medium for the flight, not only of birds, but of thoughts. Distance scarce any more lends enchantment to the view, for 'tis annihilated. The ends of the earth meet, and the watchmen on her walls see eye to eye. Even worlds long buried in the deep unknown are now revealed to human vision, and we almost penetrate the arcana of our own fair satellite, as she nightly looks down upon us in her beauty. And man would fain believe, too, in his wisdom, or his folly, that e'en the rappings of spirits are heard in this nether planet of ours.

But what of all this? Why, we live in this whirl of galvanic motion: we breathe this excited atmosphere: we revolve on this stirring sphere. And, think you, without feeling aught of its forces?

We have our being, too, amid the busy scenes of a new world, a free world, a forming world. Our geologic species is a conglomerate. Whether it shall be of rude, unshapen masses, or of polished gems, fit not only for the pillars of this republican edifice, but for its adornment also, will depend much on the present generation, more on the women of that generation.

Believing that woman not only takes impressions from the age, but emphatically makes them on it too, I select for my theme WOMAN'S OFFICES AND INFULUENCE.

_To make home happy_ is one of the offices of woman. Home, blessed word. Thanks to our Saxon fathers for it. Not the name merely, but the realities it expresses. An English, an American home is a Bethlehem-star in the horizon of earth's sorrows, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

"There is a magic in that little word:
It is a mystic circle that surrounds
Comforts and virtues never known beyond
The hallowed limit."

"The tabernacle of our earthly joys
And sorrows, hopes and fears--this Home of ours
Is it not pleasant?"

Yes, home is the centre of all that is sweet in the sympathies, dear in the affections of the soul. There the kiss of love is impressed in its purity, the warm pressure of the hand knows no betrayal, the smile of joy plays no deceiver's part. All is candid, cordial, sincere. The faults and failings which belong to humanity fallen, are there covered by the mantle of charity, and the feeling of every member of the family is, "With all thy faults I love thee still."

How the traveler climbing Alpine summits, looking forth on the sublime creations of Jehovah, thinks of home, and wishes the loved ones there could share his rapture. How the wrecked mariner on some desert isle longs for a mother's fond endearment, a sister's kindly care. Home is in all his thoughts.

It is worth the while, then, to strive to make _home_ happy; to do each his part toward rendering it the spot of all pleasant associations. In the several relations of child, sister, wife, mother, let kindness and cheerfulness reign.

Kindness comes over the spirit like the music of David's harp over the passion of Saul. It softens and subdues. It manifests itself in a thousand nameless forms, but all beautiful. It is a crown of glory on the head of old age, a jewel on the breast of childhood. The light it diffuses is soft, the rays it emits are melting.

"And oh, if those who cluster round,
The altar and the hearth,
Have gentle words and loving smiles,
How beautiful is earth."

Cheerfulness is another attribute of character tending to the happiness of home: and let me commend it to woman's cultivation. Some there are, ever disposed to look on the dark side of life; and thus they not only becloud their own spirits, but cast a shadow over the smiling precincts of home. Every single sour grape portends a cluster; every flash of lightning a riving thunderbolt. Earth's actual cares are not enough; troubles must be borrowed. The present does not fill their heart with sadness; the future must be laid under contribution.

All this is just the opposite of cheerfulness. That scatters wide over the soil of the household the seeds of many little joys, that the weeds of small vexations may be kept under, and ever and anon the sickle be thrust in and a harvest of good fruits be garnered for daily use. It gazes on the bright side of the picture, and throws its delighted glances upon every eye. And thus it not only augments present bliss, but in hoary years the memory of other days around the family hearth will be sweeter, and the influence on ourselves better.

"Cheerfully to bear thy cross in patient strength is duty." "Not few nor light are the burdens of life: then load it not with heaviness of spirit; sickness, and penury, and travail--these be ills enow: the tide is strong against us: struggle, thou art better for the strife, and the very energy shall hearten thee."

"In thy day of grief let nature weep; leave her alone; the freshet of her sorrow must run off; and sooner will the lake be clear, relieved of turbid floodings. Yet see, that her license hath a limit."

"For empty fears, the harassings of possible calamity, pray and thou shalt prosper: trust God and tread them down." "The stoutest armor of defense is that which is worn within the bosom, and the weapon which no enemy can parry is a bold and cheerful spirit."

Beautiful in the family is this spirit of cheerfulness; and surely it is an office of woman to cherish it. It can be wooed and won. Wherever woman goes, and especially at home, let it be as an halo of light around her head, and then shall she be a blessing to the circle in which she moves. Despondency is death, cheerfulness life. But remember that levity and boisterous mirth are no essential ingredients of this wholesome cordial. Its chief element is rather that which Paul spake of when he said, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."

Another office of woman is, _to check the utilitarianism, the money-loving spirit of the day_. There is something beside bread and water to be cared for in this probationary world of ours, inhabited by living _spirits_. And yet one is almost compelled to the conclusion that the whole race, at the present day, has given itself up to the worship of Mammon.

That which is a _physical_ fact, which is capable of being _used_, is the _summum bonum. Cui bono_, in a terrene sense, is the great question. "Will it pay," the grand idea of the age. And men are hurrying along, life in hand, breathless and bootless, over the highways and byways to the Great Mogul's temple, where there is no spiritual Divinity to revere.

We almost wish the return of the old Grecian's faith, who enveloped himself with a spiritual world, and this, at least, elevated his intellect, if it did not renovate his heart. To him the majestic mountain was peopled with august entities. To us it is of no account, if it do not contain in its bowels buried stores of wealth, though it may awaken the feeling of the sublime, and lift the soul up to God. To him the shady tree was the habitation of dryads, the rippling brook of naïads: to us, neither has beauty, unless the one can turn a mill, and the other furnish us fire-wood or lumber.

We have made the soul slave to the body; have stripped the Universe of its glory, as a reflecting mirror, pouring down upon us such rays of Heaven's brilliancy as our vision can endure. God's sun is only to lighten us on our pathway of business; His mighty ocean only to bear the burden of our commerce; His magnificent lakes to carry our trade; His beautiful hills and smiling vales but to grow our corn, feed our cattle, and be the substratum for our railways.

This utilitarianism of the day, too, has but little sympathy with the fine arts. It laughs at music and painting, poetry and sculpture, as things of naught, although they may tend mightily to the culture of the spirit and the refinement of humanity. Classical learning it discards, because with its dusty eyes it can not just see how that can qualify man or woman for the better enjoyment of life, or how it will help us plow or measure our fields, grind our grain, or churn our butter.

The mere discipline of the mind, the symmetrical development of man's higher powers, the æsthetic evolution of himself; all this, though it expand his intellect and enlarge his heart, though it impress on him more of the lineaments of the skies, and bring him nearer to his great Original, is but waste of time and thought, because it falls not within the described circle of the utilitarian. Shades of Bacon and Locke, of Shakspeare and Milton, of Goethe and Schiller, come and alight at least on the daughters of our land!

Here is a wide field of influence for woman. You are the vestal virgins to watch the fires on the altar of the fine arts. Yours it is to check the sensuousness of man, to recall him from his ceaseless toil after the mammon of this life, his restless ambition to turn every thing to account in available funds, in bank-stocks, copper-stocks, railroad-stocks. Tell your sons and your sires that there are higher sources of joy. Point them away from earth's sordid gold to the brighter gems of literature. Direct their energies to the intellectual and moral advancement of their age. Help them to slake their quenchless thirst at the pure fountains of knowledge and religion.

There is a poetry of life worth cultivating. There are spiritual entities around us to which we are linked by ethereal chains. Let us not struggle to throw off those chains, but rather to bind them faster about us. And when you see a link broken, and others likely to drop, mend it.

Woman's office is it also _to soften political asperities in the other sex, and themselves to shun political publicity_. Not that woman need be ignorant of the great questions of the age; better be familiar with them. But let her not become absorbed in them: rather keep so aloof from exciting occasions as to be better qualified to form and express a deliberate and unbiased judgment on men and measures. Let her opinions be well matured, and always uttered with calmness and caution. When her dearest friends of the other sex seem embittered toward others, and in danger of forgetting the sweet charities of life amid the chafings of party rivalry, let her pour out the milk of human kindness into the cup of courtesy, and ask them to drink of it. When the waters are troubled and the billows roar, let her diffuse over them the oil of love to still the waters into a great calm. Surely this is an office higher, better far, than to be pressing on, as some would have her, into the busy bustle of out-door politics. Here is _influence_, and it is better than _power_.

Who that loves woman, that really admires her worth as _woman_, that thinks of her as the delicate, refined, tasteful, sensitive development of humanity, the incarnation of all that is lovely, gentle, modest, peaceful, and pure, the highest earthly manifestation of God as _love;_ who that remembers her as the "help-meet," can bear the thought of hurrying her out upon the theatre of politics, the platform of legislation?

"Woman's rights," they cry, and so loud the cry, that even woman's ambition has conquered her judgment and her delicacy, and she has gone forth, out of her appointed and fitting sphere, to be gazed on by a curious crowd, and perhaps to hear the plaudits of a noisy populace. _O tempora! O mores!_ Save us from such a race of women!

Now woman has rights, many rights, and let them be well guarded; but she has no right to be a _man_. Yet, no wonder 'tis, if amid the stirring enterprises and new discoveries of the age, some half-amazon should defy the customs of social life, and assume the right of leveling all distinctions between the sexes, walking forth _à la Turk_, and becoming the gazing-stock of the street. Oh, let beauteous, winning woman wear the gracefully-flowing robes of modesty; let her not be met by us "up to the eyes" in politics, nor at the ballot-box, nor the caucus, nor in the legislative hall, nor on the judicial bench, surrounded, perchance, by tobacco-chewing barristers, nor as the public haranguer, addressing promiscuous multitudes.

Let us rather see her in the quiet retirement of home, not doomed to the busy drudgery of hard housekeeping merely, but there the refined woman, whose pure sensibilities are shocked at the thought of a public notoriety; who shuns the wistful gaze of the crowd, and finds in her own family circle her kingdom and her _rights_, and seeks to adorn that with all that is lovely and of good report. Thus will she win our admiration and secure our love. Were her intellect and her eloquence displayed at the bar or on the platform, we might indeed wonder with deep amazement, but we should not love; and wanting this, both she and we were unhappy.

While sensible, then, of her equality with man in the possession of a soul like his own, capable of the highest enterprises in science and literature, may she yet recognize, as the appointment of her all-wise Creator, subordination to man in power, superordination in influence. Be content to be _woman_. It is a province high enough. If not cherubic, it is seraphic. It is that phase of humanity we think most godlike; for if Jehovah's highest expression of himself is _Love_, then that form of humanity expressing most of it, is most like Him. That form, in our opinion, is woman.

Let her not, then, strip herself of her chief glory, and depart further from her God and Saviour, by shooting out from her own feminine orbit, and aiming to revolve in that of the other sex, under the false impression that it is a higher one. Even if it were, it is not hers, and by thus battling with the order of nature, and swinging loose from the proper relations of her being, she might become a wandering star in the blackness of darkness forever.

Another evident office of woman is, _to regulate the forms and control the habits of social life_. In this land, especially, do the "lords of creation" bow with due deference to their ladies. We give them our arms, 'tis true, and we ask them to lean upon us, yet do we take step with them, and in turn lean on them, amid the trying times of life, and look to them for many of our joys, for most of our happiness. He is vulgar, even barbarous, we think, who does not appreciate her worth and respect her character. Hence, every where, hers is the first place, the best place; and an American gentleman would rather suffer an agony than subject women to a discomfort.

Such being her relative position, hers it must be to prescribe the customs of social life, and say to man, "hitherto shalt thou go and no further." The tone of morals will be such as she makes it. Man will be conformed to the model she exhibits. He seldom, if ever, rises above the level of his female associates. Surround him with the vulgar, the thoughtless, the impure, and you shall not see him pure, thoughtful, refined. Place him ever in the society of intelligent, dignified, Christian women, and their virtues will be reflected on him.

And is it so, that woman is responsible, in a great measure, for the fashions and habits of the community in which she lives? It is even so. If she discard that foolish frippery and passion for display, which occasionally characterize her own sex, it will not long live. It must be buried in its own foibles, and have no resurrection. If she frown upon him who robs woman of her jewel, he is a fugitive on the face of the earth. If she discountenance the use of intoxicating beverages, the young man will learn that abstinence on his part is the price of respect and love on hers. Her office here is magnified: her influence has become a power. The other offices were guiding and directory; this is reformatory. Society looks to her for its type. Its virtues and its vices are of her moulding. _It is what she bids it be._

What a potency! Let her wield it for her country's welfare. Then shall it be a beacon light to other lands now in darkness and degradation, because there woman is still the slave of man's passions, and has never risen, under Christianity, to know her dignity, and make her brutal master feel her moral equality in the scale of being.

Only one other office of woman shall we notice at present--_the exemplification and diffusion of Christianity_--of Christianity, not so much in its forms and dogmas, as in its spirit; not solely as a redeeming scheme, but also as a reforming power.

To Christianity woman is emphatically a debtor. It has breathed into her its breath of life, and she has become a living soul. Else had she been but a dead manikin. To it she owes her present advanced position, her commanding influence. Even all the literature and refinement of Greece and Rome could not confer on woman the boon which the religion of Jesus has brought her. He was woman's son, and his religion tells it. Go where that religion is not, and there woman is naught.

Christianity has not only broken down the wall of partition between male and female, but has opened the sealed fountains of her soul, and caused them to send forth rills of gentleness and love, which have refreshed humanity and poured out gladness on a dark and dreary world. Let the cross, then, be woman's standard, Jesus woman's trust, Christianity woman's charter. That thrown overboard, we are wrecked. Its principles abandoned, the world sinks again into barbarism, and woman to brute degradation. "The last at the cross and earliest at the sepulchre," must remember to cling to Christianity as her hope, her life. Let _her_ never be ashamed to confess it her ruling principle, her source of joy, nor be hesitant in disseminating its seeds, that she may every where behold its lily-flowers.

Can it ever be well said of woman, "she careth not if there be a God, or a soul, or a time of retribution; pleasure is the idol of her heart: she thirsteth for no purer heaven." Let such an one be decked in all the gorgeous trappings of wealth, let her brow be crowned with the coronet of rank, let her girdle hold the key which unlocks the treasures of California, and yet she wants that which ennobles her sex, and would render her an object of love and a source of joy to others.

"Oh, what is woman, what her smile,
Her lip of love, her eyes of light.
What is she, if her lips revile
The lowly Jesus? Love may write
His name upon her marble brow,
And linger in her curls of jet:
The light spring-flower may scarcely bow
Beneath her step--and yet--and yet--
Without that meeker grace she'll be
A lighter thing than vanity."

Never, then, let the sneer of the infidel, nor the scorn of the skeptic drive woman from compounding the spices to embalm her crucified Master, nor make her ashamed to be seen early at his sepulchre. Rather let her glory in the cross, and make the most of her high mission here to send its healing influences to every sick and sorrowing creature on this green earth. Why should any poor, perishing mortal be left in all the degradation of idolatry, when there is in our possession a power that would lift him to heights of bliss, temporal and eternal? Why should the world be left to its wailings and its woes, when Christianity diffused, in its benign spirit, would convert those woes into joys, those wailings into hallelujahs? How can woman, owing her all to the religion of the Bible, refrain from exerting her energies to place this word of life in the hands of every pilgrim over the deserts of time? And may she so breathe its spirit and feel its power, that it shall never again be thus written of her:

"There came
A stranger bright and beautiful
With steps of grace, and eye of flame,
And tone and look most sweetly blent
To make her presence eloquent;
Oh, then I looked for tears. She stood
Before the prisoner of Calvary.
I saw the piercing spear--the blood--
The gall--the writhe of agony.
I saw his quivering lips in prayer,
'Father, forgive them'--all was there!
I turned in bitterness of soul,
And spake of Jesus. I had thought
Her feelings would refuse control:
For woman's heart I knew was fraught
With gushing sympathies. She gazed
A moment on it carelessly,
Then coldly curl'd her lip, and praised
The high priest's garment! Could it be
That look was meant, dear Lord, for thee!"

A few words on _Influence_. This is woman's power. That distinctively belongs to man, and is exercised by authority. Law and penalty grow out of it. It regulates actions, it punishes crime. Influence, on the other hand, awakens feeling, generates opinions, implants sentiments in the soul, silently yet emphatically; and thus it crushes vice, promotes virtue, and avoids the necessity of penal infliction.

Now this is pre-eminently the potent lever in the hands of woman for regenerating and reforming the political and moral world. We may stand in awe, indeed, before the exhibition of _power_, whether physical or moral, but we are not won by them to the love of truth and goodness, while _influence_ steals in upon our hearts, gets hold of the springs of action, and leads us into its own ways. It is the _inflowing_ upon others from the nameless traits of character which constitute woman's idiosyncracy. Her heart is a great reservoir of love, the water-works of moral influence, from which go out ten thousand tubes, conveying off the ethereal essences of her nature, and diffusing them quietly over the secret chambers of man's inner being.

Even the weakness of woman softens and subdues, and thus unseals the soul for the infusion of her own sentiments. Her winning smiles, her tender sympathies, her sensible expressions, her gentle ways, all influence us, flow in upon our spirits. Who can be long boisterous in the presence of woman? No more can the yeasty waves dash and foam when superinfused by the mollifying touch of oil, than can the passions of man rage with impetuosity in contact with the oleaginous serenity of gentle woman.

Let man, then, exercise power; woman exert influence. By this will she best perform her offices, discharge her duties. Thus will she most effectually make home happy, restrain utilitarianism, allay party asperities, regulate the habits of social life, and both exemplify and diffuse Christianity. Thus will she become _vanqueur des vanqueurs de la terre_--"conqueror of the conquerors of earth," and do more to bless the world, and make it truly happy, than all political institutions, fiscal agencies, and merely intellectual educations.

Surely this is a mission exalted. Let no woman despise it, though it exclude her from the senator's seat and the chair of state. Let her rather remember that she honors herself more, glorifies her God better, and elevates her race higher, by adorning the sphere which her very physical organization prescribes. Never will she be improved in her nature, elevated in her influence, happier in her own spirit, or more potent in effecting the happiness of the world, by aiming at the proper dignities of _man_, throwing herself out upon the arena of public life, meddling and mingling in its chafings and chances. Ah no! let us still hope that woman will have good sense enough to discern the wisdom of God in her proper relation, and that man shall still and ever have the privilege and the joy of admiring and loving her as gentle, retiring, delicate, yet influential _woman_.

THE TOWN-HO'S STORY.[5]

[5] From "The Whale." The title of a new work by Mr. Melville, in the press of Harper and Brothers, and now publishing in London by Mr. Bentley.

BY HERMAN MELVILLE.

The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet more travelers than in any other part.

It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho's story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secresy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was awakened he could not well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's mainmast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record.

For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time.

"Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days' sail eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the northward of the Line. One morning, upon handling the pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold than common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came; more days went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor, among the islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired.

"Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance favored, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free; never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo.

"'Lakeman!--Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?' said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.

"On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but--I crave your courtesy--may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now, gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well nigh as large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far Manilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had yet been nurtured by all those agrarian free-booting impressions popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours--Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan--possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted all round their banks; here and there are frowned upon by batteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the fleet thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer, and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any. And for Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn handled Bowie-knives. Yet was this Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt--but, gentlemen, you shall hear.

"It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her prow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho's leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length; that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast, or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters, some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel a little anxious.

"Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by several of her company; especially by Radney the mate. He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a part owner in her. So when they were working that evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear as any mountain spring, gentlemen--that bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes.

"Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional world of ours--watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a chance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to Charlemagne's father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it.

"Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with his gay banterings.

"'Ay, ay, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one of ye, and let's have a taste. By the Lord, it's worth bottling! I tell ye what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had best cut away his part of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only began the job; he's come back again 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; making improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now, I'd tell him to jump overboard and scatter 'em. They're playing the devil with his estate, I can tell him. But he's a simple old soul--Rad, and a beauty, too. Boys, they say the rest of his property is invested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the model of his nose.'

"'Damn your eyes! what's that pump stopping for?' roared Radney, pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk. 'Thunder away at it!'

"'Ay, ay, sir,' said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. 'Lively, boys, lively, now!' And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines; the men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life's utmost energies.

"Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went forward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face fiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large.

"Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho that had been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain of one of the gangs; consequently he should have been freed from any trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties, such being the case with his comrades. I mention all these particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood between the two men.

"But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat in his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate's malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in him and the slow match silently burning along toward them; as he instinctively saw all this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper passionateness in any already ireful being--a repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men even when aggrieved--this nameless phantom feeling, gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt.

"Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him, saying that sweeping the deck was not his business, and he would not do it. And then, without at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads as the customary sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done little or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath, in a most domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his command; meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper's club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by.

"Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he remained doggedly; rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do his bidding.

"Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated his intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his forbearance had not the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with his twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but it was to no purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly round the windlass; when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking him that he had now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:

"'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.

"Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their mast-heads. They were both Canalers.

"'Canalers!' cried Don Pedro. 'We have seen many whaleships in our harbors, but never heard of your Canalers. Pardon: who and what are they?'

"Canalers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You must have heard of it.

"'Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous North.'

"Ay? Well, then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha's very fine; and, ere proceeding further I will tell you what our Canalers are; for such information may throw side-light upon my story.

"For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivaled for fertility; by billiard-room and bar room; through the holy-of-holies of great forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties; and especially by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. There's your true Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronizing lee of churches. For by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most abound in holiest vicinities.

"'Is that a friar passing?' said Don Pedro, looking downward into the crowded plaza, with humorous concern.

"'Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in Lima,' laughed Don Sebastian. 'Proceed, Senor.'

"'A moment! Pardon!' cried another of the company. 'In the name of all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast--"Corrupt as Lima." It but bears out your saying, too; churches more plentiful than billiard-tables, and forever open--and "Corrupt as Lima." So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St. Mark!--St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out again.'

"Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaler would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he. Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaler so proudly sports; his slouched and gayly-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of those Canalers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one. 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. Nor does it at all diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys and young men born along its line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas."

"'I see! I see!' impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha upon his silvery ruffles. 'No need to travel! The world's one Lima. I had thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold and holy as the hills. But the story.'

"I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay. Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the four harpooners, who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canalers rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it toward the forecastle. Others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and down with a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran close up to the revolving border of the confusion, and prying into the heart of it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his resentment. But 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.

"'Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?' demanded their ringleader.

"'Turn to! turn to!--I make no promise; to your duty! Do you want to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!' and he once more raised a pistol.

"'Sink the ship?' cried Steelkilt. 'Ay, let her sink. Not a man of us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. What say ye, men?' turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their response.

"The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his eye on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these: 'It's not our fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boys' business: he might have known me before this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we're your men; but we won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to! I make no promises: turn to, I say!'

"'Look ye, now,' cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm toward him, 'there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don't want a row; it's not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but we won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to!' roared the Captain.

"Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said: 'I tell you what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but till you say the word about not flogging us, we don't do a hand's turn.'

"'Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there till ye're sick of it. Down ye go.'

"'Shall we?' cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down into their dark den, growlingly disappearing like bears into a cave.

"As the Lakeman's bare head was just level with the planks, the Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over the slide of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the companionway. Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them--ten in number--leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained neutral.