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MOBY DICK; OR 
ties of jour man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to hack 
a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one. In sum, 
gentlemen, what the wilderness of this canal life is, is emphatically 
evinced by this: that our w T ild 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 be- 
tween quietly reaping in a Christian cornfield, 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. ‘Ho need to travel ! The world’s one 
Lima. I had thought, now, that at your temperate North the gener- 
ations 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 harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. 
But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers 
rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it towards 
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 re- 
volving 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 suc- 
ceeded 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 menac- 
ing 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 
