THE WHITE WHALE 227 
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 Lake- 
man 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 towards them; as he 
instinctively saw all this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness 
to stir up the deeper passionateness in an 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 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 hearing in the mate; but somehow still smoth- 
ering 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 re- 
peated his intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his forbear- 
ance had not the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intima- 
