sely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the
Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for
a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent helm--nigh
to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready dug to
the seaman's hand--that fatal hour was then to come; and in the
fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and
stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.

"But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody
deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the
avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in
to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have
done.

"It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second
day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe man,
drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, 'There she
rolls! there she rolls!' Jesu, what a whale! It was Moby Dick.

"'Moby Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do
whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?'

"'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;--but
that would be too long a story.'

"'How? how?' cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.

"'Nay, Dons, Dons--nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get more
into the air, Sirs.'

"'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend looks
faint;--fill up his empty glass!'

"No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.--Now, gentlemen,
so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the
ship--forgetful of the compact among the crew--in the excitement of the
moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted
his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had been
plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy.
'The White Whale--the White Whale!' was the cry from captain, mates,
and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious
to capture so famous and precious 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 bowsm