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MOBY DICK; OR 
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 in- 
vested 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 V roared Radney, 
pretending not to have heard the sailor’ talk. ‘Thunder away at it!’ 
“ ‘Aye, aye, 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 ; hut 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 matter consequent 
upon allowing a pig to run at large. 
“Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship’s deck at sea is a piece of house- 
hold 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 TownrHo 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 
