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.
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