n case any should be discovered. For,
spite of her leak, and spite of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still
maintained her mast-heads, and her captain was just as willing to
lower for a fish that moment, as on the day his craft first struck the
cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his
berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the
vital jaw of the whale.

"But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of
passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till all
was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who
had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney the chief
mate's watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to run more than
half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the rigging, he insisted,
against the express counsel of the captain, upon resuming the head
of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two other circumstances,
Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.

"During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the
bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of
the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side.
In this attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a
considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between
this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next
trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in the morning of the
third day from that in which he had been betrayed. At his leisure,
he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his
watches below.

"'What are you making there?' said a shipmate.

"'What do you think? what does it look like?'

"'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me.'

"'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length
before him; 'but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough
twine,--have you any?'

"But there was none in the forecastle.

"'Then I must get some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft.

"'You don't mean to go a begging to HIM!' said a sailor.

"'Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help himself
in the end, shipmate?' and going to the mate, he looked at him
quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given
him--neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night
an iron ball, clo