By Sam Libby
THE EYES OF THE WORLD:Introduction to The MutinyBy Richard Reeve
I'm not going to hold back any punches. The Mutiny is an important event in the life of the myth that Herman Melville unleashed in Moby Dick.
By boring down into the 'The Town-Ho's Story', Chapter 53 in 'Moby Dick, and hauling it to the stage, Sam Libby has cut into the heart of the fullest reading of the myth. And The Mutiny is eminently stageable. Any posse of players with enough integrity to pull off Shakespeare will find herein a full plate of the cathartic mystery.
But before we explore the mutiny as it stands alone, lets try to get a handle on the importance of the 'The Town-Ho Story' chapter within Moby Dick.
Through a deep look into Melville's marginalia, Charles Olson was able to discover where Melville sensed the American myth was headed. In Call Me Ishmael we learn that there was a projected sequel (not unlike Dostoevsky's intended but never written sequel to The Brothers Karamozov) to be titled Eclipse, with its mythic foundation in Noah after the flood, or post-apocalyptic world, based on the story of Capt. Pollard of the ill fated Nantucket whaler Essex.
Indeed, the narrative force generated throughout Moby Dick is based in and draws its uncanny omniscient qualities from Ishmael's post-apocalyptic awareness. It's an attention so melded into the fabric of unfolding events that it reveals the experience of transcendence. The Transcendentalists only pointed at the selfsame mystery.
To see the innovation, one needs to stop placing Ahab and his monomaniacal flaw at the center of the tragedy. Instead, we need to recognize Ishmael's transformation from the anemic voice slinking out of Manhattan at the onset to the powerful troubadour that narrates the story of Steelkilt from the Golden Inn. Here is the only glimpse we get of the post-apocalyptic Ishmael and its buried in the middle of the book. On that late night veranda, that eve of one saint's day, we encounter first hand the figure that was to have emerged in Eclipse, a figure of Noah after the flood, or as Libby has accurately seen, a Jonah.
Here is the storyteller, confident, in control of his material and his audience, creating a transfixed atmosphere infused with an epic stature. Here alone our minds eye is presented with the new man, reborn through the maelstrom of apocalypse, living in a world of a different order.
There are literary precedents. Consider Odysseus telling of his journey after the lovely fair-ankled Nausikka takes him to her father the King. The Greek hero infuses his audience with a similar quality of awe and wonder, but Ishmael goes a step further.
His power is not limited to or dependant upon autobiography. His journey has led to an analogical awareness that transcends the limits of his own story. In his catastrophic experience emerges the ability to identify fully with the meaning in the stories of others. Out of Ishmael's recognition of the mythic depths that move through himself and other develops the sanction to become a mouthpiece of the living story, the story of the world. I go so far as to make the claim that in Ishmael Melville has defined a new order of hero, the hero of observation.
Olson defines cosmology in Poetry and Truth as "a spiritual condition I think many people in this room have already known in other ways, which is to get around the other side of the nature of anything, especially, like, what we now can call our experience and not mean something that is subjective, but is common." A full reading of Moby Dick sees that it is Ishmaels getting to the other side, his cosmology job, especially in reference to the "boring" chapters, those digressions from the narrative which many a student has complained about, that makes the emergence of the new man possible. To this end Libby has done well preserving the sense of digression in The Righteous Mutiny.
"The Town-Ho's Story" lives within Moby Dick as a separate, autonomous entity, the facts of which were kept from Ahab and the mates. It's amazing to me how it has been missed or glossed over by Melville's commentators. This secret tale presents a distinct resolution from the Pequod's inevitable confrontation between the white whale and its enemy.
In Steelkilt's story all the vague spiritual attributions previously assigned to the whale get solidified into an omnipotent avenging arm of justice. The tale of Steelkilt's mutiny shows that not all men are the enemy of the white whale. In fact leviathan becomes the avenger for Steelkilt, the whole man living in harmony with the cosmos.
The Righteous Mutiny sets on stage a passageway to the post-apocalyptic world unlike Ishmael's fairytale like last second salvation upon Queequeg's coffin/life buoy. A man true to his higher Self, who gets hauled up the mast himself a Christ in the face of infectious petty tyranny that defines our warped social order, this man the Cosmos will defend, preserve and set into a new world the rest of us are still clamoring to reach.
Libby's rendering of the Golden Inn realizes more completely than Melville's the new world.Those who suffer from imaginative cramps while hiding beneath the moniker 'purist' will detest what they will perceive as Libby's imposition of the woman. To this end note that Melville makes it clear that it's chicha, not wine being consumed, and I'd encourage that before any lynching gangs are sent this way, they make a short inquiry into the fermentation process that makes the corn yield.
It is here that the imaginative window broadens not for the sake of Moby Dick, but for the life of the myth. Libby unlocks Melville's hints. The result allows the play to carry on the myth autonomously, into the new reality, as it must.
We are being swamped daily with the constellation of the archetype of the apocalypse. We can't overlook Jung's insight into acausal meaning in synchronicity.
The seamless insertion of D. H. Lawrence's insights into Jonah's ayahuasca vision puts on stage perhaps the most important question America has faced since day one.
What happens when the Pequod goes down?
It's a question we'd better start taking seriously. Obviously its still a toss up. Either the whole show gets sucked down the tubes or perhaps a few will escape on some unexpected life buoys. But to what end?
Let us turn to a passage near the end of Lawrence's Apocalypse which provides a cosmological frame to what so clearly stands out in Steelkilt and Ishmael/Jonah's presence, and possibility our modern world desperately denies, resists, opposes and undermines as the new birth.
"What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his 'soul.' Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea."
AUTHORS PREFACE
Herman Melville unleashed the Greatest, White-est, Whale of an American Myth.
All serious High American Culture, since, has been the lowering of whaleboats - life/ death struggle with IT - the oceanic mystery that surrounds and pervades the human condition.
The Pequod and most all of the other ships in 'Moby Dick' are undeniably American vessels. And these American vessels/containers are the places where humanity is experiencing its further possibilities. They are fulfilling the further brutal possibilities of early American industrial civilization. But they are also places where it is possible to envision humanity's further experiental, existential powers.
This isn't a political or social or economic process. It is an Emersonian, American Transcendental, Experiencing, Knowing. This is what is happening to Ishmael/Jonah in the only part of the novel that occurs after the death of Ahab and the sinking of the Pequod.
It is happening at the Golden Inn in Lima, Peru, after Ishmael/Jonah has been rescued by the 'Rachel' and we can surmise, after the 'Rachel', soon after, went to Lima's port of Callao to enlist replacements for her lost crew-members.
As he is coming into his further possibilities, his further powers, Ishmael/Jonah narrates The Greatest, White-est Whale of an American Myth. The Golden Inn is the place where he is entering into the further possibilities of the human vocation. He starts by telling the story of the Steelkilt Mutiny.
The Revolutionary, Heretical, Gnostic, Transcendental Experiencing, Knowing of Melville is that it was never about being Christians it was always about realizing the further human potential of being a Christ. This is what the story of the Steelkilt Mutiny is about. This is why Ishmael/Jonah begins the first public narrative of his experiencing of The Myth with Steelkilt's story.
The denying of the mystery is the denying of death. And denying death is denying life. Steelkilt's story, Ishmael's/Jonah's parable is about the right posture in the face of mystery, in the face of life-its-ownself, and the not-business-as-usual. Mysteries will always be mysteries. The Prophet Melville accepted, embraced, opened himself to the mystery - as a mystery. He did not deny it with a religious, magic, folk-tale.
In the telling of the parable of The Mutiny Ishmael/Jonah/Melville face into the storm, face into the great oceanic mystery that surrounds and pervades the human condition. And in so doing they acquire more life in life in a time and space that goes beyond all known boundaries of the human circumstances, the human possibilities. This is where Steelkilt and Ishmael begin their ministries. And this is where the mutiny begins.
CAST:
Ishmael/Jonah
Buffalo/Steelkilt
Radney
Captain
1st Erie Canaller
2nd Erie Canaller
1st Savage Harpooner
2nd Savage Harpooner
Second Mate
Third Mate
10 mutineers/drummers/water pumpers.
One of Steelkilt's Men: a drummer/water pumper loyal to Steelkilt.
Three cabin boys (who are neutral)
Nine other crew members that do not join sides
Eight crew members that join with two harpooners, second mate and third mate on side of the captain, drummers for business-as-usual.
The Stupid Teneriffe Man: One of the men who stay loyal to the Captain.
A pig.
Duena Maria
Duena Catherina
Five other Akhalonas (beautiful women chosen by the Incan mysteries)
Don Pedro (an Incan nobleman)
Don Sebastian (an Incan nobleman)
three other Duenas (Incan noblewomen)
two recently corrupted young women from the banks of the Erie Canal
a young man resembling Jonah who is accosted and being robbed
Act I, Scene 1
(At the Golden Inn - Just as the Moby Dick world is a relentlessly male world, the Golden Inn is a relentlessly female place.
It is also an Incan place. It is an Incan Temple, of the Ahkolona, the chosen women, women chosen by the Incan mysteries. It is a temple to the wild, entheogenic, bacchus mysteries. And there is no contradiction in that the Golden Inn is a chicha or corn beer brewery/pub/ live-music venue/urban club.
Chicha, (which means spit in Spanish), is fermented by the saliva of women. The sacred chicha was fermented and brewed by the Ahkolona for the Incan royalty and nobility.The curtain opens with the seven sisters on the Golden Inn's stage. Outside a tropical, thunder storm rages. The sisters are singing, drumming, and opening sacred space. Their song is also about facing into the storm, facing into the mystery. In the moment when the song and drumming, and dancing ends there is a strong, rhythmic knocking on a strong, wooden, speak-easy door that has a metal slit at eye level.
Duena Maria goes to the door, opens the metal slit on the door to see who is on the other side of the door. There is a long pause.Duena Maria steps back as she opens the door to wet Jonah/Ishmael and The Buffalo/Steelkilt.
They enter.The Buffalo is a young, bearded Nordic Giant.
Jonah is older, dark, smaller.
They both have the fitness and athleticism that would be expected of 19th Century whalers. Jonah carries a small, canvas duffel bag. Duena Maria and Duena Catherina help them get their wet foul weather gear off.
They bring towels and help them dry themselves.
Duena Maria has a sister-like resemblence to Jonah, Duena Catherina has a sister-like resemblence to The Buffalo.)
Duena Catherina: Who are you? Are you pirates or angels?
The Buffalo: Mariners, and hunters of leviathan, Madame.
Jonah: We seek an honest and good household.
Duena Maria: You have found one, gentlemen. But wouldn't you be more comfortable at the waterfront establishments in Callao where your colleagues always gather?
Jonah: We are here not as a shore-leave, not because of coincidence or happenstance. We are here because it is meant that we be here. Our footsteps have been directed here.
Duena Maria: For what purpose, senor?
Jonah: To tell of oceanic revelations, to speak truth to the face of power, to bring good news.
Duena Maria: We try not to come, needlessly, to the attention of cruel and rapacious rulers.
(Duena Maria pauses for a long moment.)
Duena Maria: But this is such a place.
(Duena Catherina brings trays with glasses of chicha.
The Buffalo, Jonah drink with thirst.)
Duena Maria: (to Jonah) Que se llama? What are you called, senor?
Jonah: Call me Jonah.
Duena Maria: An ill-omened name for a mariner.
Jonah: A joyous name for a man to be called.
Duena Catherina (to The Buffalo) And you, senor?
The Buffalo: Call me The Buffalo.
Duena Maria: Such quaint names you Americanos go by.
Will you both be staying with us?
The Buffalo: My shipmate will. But I must return to the 'Rachel.'
Duena Catherina: Well finish your chicha, and be at your ease Senor Buffalo.
(Duena Maria and Jonah go to an edge of the stage. Jonah in a practiced seamen-like way hangs his simple, sailor's hammock, as he talks to Duena Maria.)
Duena Catherina: (to The Buffalo) Who is your friend? What manner of man is he?
The Buffalo: He is the only survivor of the Nantucket Whale-Ship 'Pequod,' which was stove-in and sunk by a great, white, Spermaceti Whale.
He is a prophet, one who brings oceanic revelations.
(Pause while Duena Catherina considers this, while closely appraising the Buffalo.)
Duena Catherina: And what manner of man are you?
The Buffalo: I am a Lakesman from the United States of America, from the state of New York, from the city of Buffalo.
Duena Catherina: Lakesman? What is a Lakesman?
The Buffalo: Well in North America are these great inland seas which, although landlocked, they are traversed in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well nigh as large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far Manila.
Although born far from the mighty Atlantic and Pacific Oceans I have been nurtured by agrarian free-booting impressions popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours-Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan,-possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of climes.
They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted all around their banks; here and there are frowned upon with batteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the fleet thundering of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer, and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew.
Duena Catherina: I did not know of this wild geography of el Norte.
But why do you wax so long and so poetic about your birth place?
Buffalo: You asked me what manner of man, I am. I'm trying to give you as complete and honest an answer as I can.
I'm telling you that though I am an inlander, I am wild-ocean born, as audacious a mariner as any.
Duena Catherina: I thank you for your attentiveness to my question.
The Buffalo: I hope you will be as attentive when I now ask you, what manner of woman are you?
Duena Catherina: I am of the Ahkolona, the women chosen by the Incan mysteries.
For three hundred years we have concealed our selves from the Spanish and the terror of their blasphomous Inquisition so that our sacred mysteries will continue.
The Buffalo: I think ye for your attentiveness to my question and the honesty of your answer.
Your secret is safe with me.
(takes a long drink from his cup of chicha)
The Buffalo: Presently, I am of the crew of the 'Rachel,' another Nantucket Whale-ship. About three weeks ago, a boat with the Captain's son went missing after a combat with this same great, white whale, which later stoved in and sank the Pequot.
We searched for the missing for over a week. We never found a trace of 'em. But we found Jonah.
He told us when he was a crew-member of the 'Pequod' he was known as Ishmael. But, he says, Ishmael, died with the rest of the crew of the 'Pequod,' and like Jonah, he is directed by a power greater than the natural human to this your Ninevah of Lima. At first my shipmates wanted to cast him overboard. But then he had a wonderful ascendancy with them.
When the grief-sickened Captain finally called off his futile search, we were bound for Callao. And Jonah was always bound for this infamous city of Lima, and this hospitable Golden Inn.
Duena Catherina: How did he know of the Golden Inn?
The Buffalo: The same way he knows of all his revelations and prophecies.
The crew insisted I come with him to ensure he found a safe-harbor, to make sure he wasn't left destitute, to make sure his holiness was recognized and to give you this.
(Buffalo places in Duena Catherina's hand a sack of coins)
Buffalo: He insisted on leaving with nothing more than the shoes on his feet, the clothes on his back, and his hammock. The crew collected this for his board and lodging and anything else he may need.
Duena Catherina: We're honored to receive this holiness. This is not necessary.
(Attempts to return sack of coins. Buffalo gently takes hold of Duena Catherina's hand and closes it over coin sack.)
Buffalo: Please take it.
(Duena Catherina holds on to the bag. The Buffalo drains his glass of chicha.)
Buffalo: I go back into the storm.But I will be back, Catherina, to continue our discussion.
(Buffalo exits. )
Act 1, Scene 2
(The thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn, overlooking Lima, at twilight. It's one saint's eve. Jonah, Don Pedro, Don Sebastian, the seven Ahkolonas and other dons and duenas are smoking aromatic herbs, and drinking chicha.
Don Sebastian is finishing a story to appreciative laughter and mirth.)
Don Pedro:(to Jonah) Senor Mariner tell us of your travels? What brings you to this, our Golden Inn?
Jonah: (Pauses) It is a long story. Most would call this long story a tragedy.
But it begins with a short story of a certain wondrous, inverted, visitation of one of those so-called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men.This short story, which I begin with is the secret, hidden part of this great tragedy which I in the coarse of time will narrate here at the Golden Inn.
As my, now destroyed, ship, the Nantucket whaling ship 'Pequod,' was rounding the southern tip of Africa, on the way to the Pacific Ocean, we encountered the 'Town-Ho', another whaling ship of Nantucket.
It was manned mainly by Polynesians. But during the ensuing gam, the social call between the ships, one of three confederate white seamen told this story to Tashtego – the Wampanoug harpooner on the 'Pequod.'
Duena Maria: Wampanougs? We know so little of our indigenous brothers and sisters of the norte.
Tell us of the Wampanougs.
Jonah: Suffice it to say, Madame, that the Wampanougs were hunters of leviathan long before European ships visited the shores of these, our Americas.
This story was communicated to Tashtego only after he agreed to abide by Romish injunctions of secrecy.
But the following night Tashtego spoke and rambled in his sleep in the forecastle, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest.
So potent an influence did this story have on the seamen who heard it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter that they kept the secret among themselves and it was never revealed to any of the ship's officers. This story never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates.
Interweaving in its proper place this dark thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now begin to put on lasting record.
(lights fade from piazza of the Golden Inn.)
Act II, Scene 1
(The stage is split.
On one side is the piazza of the Golden Inn.
On the other are the crew of the 'Town-Ho'.
The captain is on the bridge. Men are in the riggings. There are men working the windlass.
There is a pig. There are many whale-oil barrels strewn all over the stage. There are three cabin boys in a corner of the stage.
At center of the 'Town-Ho' stage is Steelkilt and his ten person water pumping/drumming crew.
The light is on the piazza at the Golden Inn.)
Jonah: Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about rehearsing to you the 'Town-Ho', was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days' sail eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the northward of the Line.
One morning upon handling the pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold than common.
(Light fades from piazza of Golden Inn. Light goes on 'Town-Ho'.
Water-pumpers/drummers begin drumming a metaphor of pumping water.)
Jonah: They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her. But the captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed they could not find it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came; more days went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among the islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired.
Though no small passage was before him, yet, if the commonest chance favored, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at them, these six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free; never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakesman and desperado from Buffalo.
It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her prow for her island haven, that the 'Town-Ho's' leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward is it altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump handles in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length; that is, if it lie along a tolerable accessible coast, or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters, some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel a little anxious.Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by several of her company; especially by Radney the first mate.
(Radney appears on 'Town-Ho' stage. He is a short, mean-tempered ugly man. He yells orders and cuffs the men when they show a reluctance, in obeying his shouted, overbearing commands.)
Don Pedro: Radney? Tell us of him?
Jonah: Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the beach, to nurse at his maternal northern sea; though in after life he had long followed this our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn handled Bowie-knives.
Yet was this Vineyarder man with some good-hearted traits.
He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehension touching his own person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently imagine. Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a part owner in her.
So when they were working that evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small gamesomeness slyly going on among them, as they stood with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear as any mountain spring, that bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes.
Now as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this world of ours-watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a chance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it.
(Steelkilt rises from the drum circle and unleashes a thunderous, rebellious, mutinous beat.)
Jonah: Also aboard the 'Town Ho' was Steelkilt a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to Charlemagne's father.
This Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt-but, you shall hear.
Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it.
(Radney sneaks up on Steelkilt and his water pumping/druming crew, and goes to a place where he believes he is hidden.
Steelkilt see's Radney. He affects not to notice him.)
Steelkilt: Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one of ye, and let's have a taste.
(Steelkilt is handed a tin cup, pretends to drink deeply.)
Steelkilt: By the Lord, it's worth bottling! I tell ye what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had best cut away his part of the hull and tow it home.
(Other seamen abandon themselves to the mirth. They lag in the drumming that is a metaphor for the pumping of the leaking water.)
Steelkilt: The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only began the job; he's come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the whole 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 invested in looking-glasses.
I wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the model of his nose.
(Men stop drumming in their mirthful laughter.Radney enraged, and hateful emerges from what he believes is a hiding place.)
Radney: Damn your eyes!
(Overbears on One of Steelkilt's men, drummer/water pumper on right side of Steelkilt in drumming circle.)
Radney: (looking down menacingly) You think I'm funny?
(Radney side steps to overbear on the seated Steelkilt.)
Radney: What's the pumps stopped for? Get thundering away at it. Now!
Steelkilt: Aye, aye, sir. (Men resume strenuous, steady, joyous, drumming.)
Steelkilt: Lively, boys, lively, now.
(Drumming becomes percussion of the human engine. Crew of water pumpers/drummers continue the pounding thunderous beat until all in the audience are dancing and all the drummers are gasping for breath. The men quit the drums/pumps and sit together, panting.
Nine other crew members (the neutral crew members) take over the drums and continue the drumming that is a metaphor for the pumping of the water. This drumming continues as a constant background.)
Jonah: Now what cozening fiend it was, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporally exasperated state I know not; but so it happened.
(Radney overbears above Steelkilt, who is reclining on the ships deck.)
Radney: See that pig shit?
(He points to pig shit on the floor.)
Radney: Get a shovel! Then sweep all the deck!
Now!
(Radney and Steelkilt freeze into tableau. Light fades from 'Town-Ho' part of the stage.
Goes on piazza at the Golden Inn).
Jonah: Sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of household 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 is the inflexibility of sea usuages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing their face.
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 Town-Ho 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 mention all these particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood between the two men.
(Light fades from piazza goes on deck of 'Town-Ho, on Steelkilt. Steelkilt is still reclining on floor.)
Jonah: 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 Lakeman fully comprehended when the mate uttered his command.
But as he sat still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked in 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 any already ireful being-a repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men even when aggrieved-this nameless phantom feeling stole over Steelkilt.
Steelkilt: (speaking softly, reasonably, compassionately) Sweeping the deck is not my business, Mr. Radney I will not do it.
(Steelkilt points to the three boys in the corner of the stage.)
Steelkilt: It is their job. They will do it.
Radney: Damn You!
You will do as I command!
Get the shovel!
Now!
(Radney snatches a cooper's hammer from the top of a nearby whale-oil barrel and advances on the still reclining Steelkilt.
Steelkilt sits up.
Radney brandishes the hammer around him, but doesn't touch him.
Steelkilt slowly rises, and slowly retreats to the windlass. Radney follows.
Steelkilt retreats around the windlass.
Radney follows, brandishing the hammer close in but not touching Steelkilt.)
Steelkilt: I will not obey, Mr. Radney.
(Steelkilt draws back his fist. They do a full revolution of windlass like this. Then Steelkilt stops retreating.)
Steelkilt: Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to yourself.
(Radney takes hammer and swings it to a couple of inches of Steelkilt's teeth. Steelkilt doesn't flinch.)
Radney: You will do as I tell you.
Who do you think you are – you bag of shit?
(Steelkilt slowly swings his right fist further behind him.)
Steelkilt: If the hammer but grazes my cheek – you are a dead man.
(Radney immediately touches the hammer to Steelkilt's cheek. Steelkilt instantanously throws a bloody, explosive, lightening strike of a punch.
Radney goes down spouting gore.
Steelkilt looks down at Radney in horror and then he tries fleeing into the riggings of the ship.
The Two Savage Ship Harpooners descend the riggings blocking Steelkilt's way.
Steelkilt leaps down on the stage, is immediately in a fist fight with two ships officers.
The two Erie Canallers swing on ropes to the stage. They go back to back with Steelkilt. They are joined by Steelkilt's ten drummers/water pumper crew.
Steelkilt and the twelve are engulphed by eight crew members who side with the captain, the two savage harpooners, the second and third officers, and the captain.
The three cabin boys and nine water pumpers/drummer stay apart from the melee and are neutral.
The captain armed with a pike ineffectually tries to make his way to where Steelkilt is. But is always being pushed, josled aside.
Steelkilt and his men fight their way to the forecastle.
It is a bloody melee. Steelkilt's people as they fight off the men loyal to the captain also pile up whale barrels in front of the forecastle, until a barricade is made.
Steelkilt and his men break off the fight to go behind the whale-oil barrel barricade.)
Captain of the Town-Ho: Come out of that, ye pirates!
(Captain draws two pistols.)
Captain: Come out of that, ye cut-throats!
(Steelkilt leaps on the whale-oil barrel barricade.)
Steelkilt: Bring it on! Go head, shoot!
But know what you bring on, Captain. You kill me and all will rise.
Captain: Return to your duty, now!
Steelkilt: Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?
Captain: Turn to! turn to!-I make no promises;-to your duty!
Do you want to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!
(Captain raises his pistols.)
Steelkilt: Sink the ship? Aye, let her sink.
Not a man of us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us.
(Steelkilt turns to men behind the barricade.)
Steelkilt: What say ye, men?
(Men give a fierce rebel yell.
Steelkilt walks the top of the barricade.)
Steelkilt: It's not our fault. We didn't want it.
I told him to take his hammer away.
It was boy's business.
He might have known me before this. I told him not to prick the buffalo.
I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw.
(Steelkilt painfully flexes the hand that delivered the blow, as he looks around the ship.)
Steelkilt: Ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men?
Look to those handspikes, my hearties.
Ay Captain, let this dirty, stinking grease-bucket sink. If this is how you're treated for working the ship, working the pumps, for 20 hours in a day
Let her sink.!
Look to yourself, Captain!
Say the word.
Don't be a fool.
Forget it all.
We are ready to turn to. Treat us decently and we are your men.
But we won't be flogged!
Steelkilt: Look ye now.
There are a few of us here, and I am one of them, who have shipped for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don't want a row; it's not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but we won't be flogged!
Captain: Turn to!
Steelkilt: I tell you what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but till you say the word about not flogging us, we won't do a hand's turn of work.
Captain: Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there till you're sick of it. Down ye go.
(Steelkilt turns to the men behind the barricades.)
Steelkilt: Shall we?
(The two Erie Canallers run up to Steelkilt.)
First Canaller: We can take the ship.
Second Canaller: Don't be a fool. Don't go down!
Steelkilt: I will not be hung for being a shabby rascal. Nothing of this world, especially this 'Town-Ho', this dirty, stinking, leaky grease bucket is worth one man's blood, one man's life.
(Steelkilt descends into the forecastle. The men behind the barrier follow, growlingly disappearing like bears into a cave. The two canallers are the last to very reluctantly descend.
As the last canaller descends, the captain and the two harpooners, second mate and third mate leap over the whale oil barrel barricade, slam shut the hatch over the forecastle and chain and padlock it.
Captain opens a slide window, hissingly whispers something which is inaudible to the audience, but is meant to be heard by Steelkilt and his followers.)
Steelkilt: (shouting from inside the forecastle) Who's over me? Truth hath no confines.That which is best and oldest in me – has no master.
(Mutineers begin drumming/singing Bob Marley's 'Get Up, Stand Up'.)
Mutineer Drummers: Get up, stand up, stand up for your right (3 times)
Get up, stand Up, don't give up the fight
Preacher man don't tell me heaven is under the earth
I know you don't know what life is really worth
Is not all that glitters in gold
and half the story has never been told
So now you see the light, aay Stand up for your right.
Come on
Get Up, Stand Up, stand up for your right (three times)
Get Up, Stand Up, don't give up the fight
Some people think great God will come from the sky
Take away ev'rything, and make ev'rybody feel high
But if you know what life is worth
You'd look for yours' right here on earth
And now you see the light
You stand up for your right
Yeah! Get Up, Stand Up, stand up for your right
Get Up, Stand Up, don't give up the fight
We're sick and tired of your ism and skism game
Die and go to heaven in Jesus' name, Lord
We know when we understand
Almighty God is a living man
You can fool some people sometimes
But you can't fool all the people all the time
So now we see the light
We gonna stand up for our right
So you'd better get up, stand up, stand up for your right
Get Up, Stand Up, don't give up the fight
Some people tink that God will come down from the sky
take away ev'rything, and make ev'rybody feel high
But if you know what life is worth
You'd look for yours right here on earth
(Mutiny Drummers don't stop playing until audience is on their feet dancing.
Then they stop drumming.
Lights fade with drummers/ water pumpers/those who remain loyal to the captain, drumming metaphor of pumping the waters that are leaking into the 'Town-Ho'. )
Act III, Scene 1
(Stage is split three ways. There is the piazza and those of the Golden Inn. There is Steelkilt and his 12 followers, in a drum circle in the forecastle. And there is a part of the stage where the Erie Canallers are to be depicted.
These areas of the stage are in the light when the action occurs there.
Lights are on piazza of Golden Inn.)
Duena Maria: So, what said the captain?
Jonah: It was only heard by Steelkilt and the men who went down into the forecastle.
But I know what was said.
It's what the master of this world always says - I am the master of this vessel. I am the master of this fallen world. I am the master of ye.
Who are ye, to challenge me, or anything I do?
(Light fades from piazza of Golden Inn. Goes on Steelkilt and his drum circle, sitting on the floor of the forecastle.)
Steelkilt: Remember Father Mapple at the Whaleman's Chapel in New Bedford.
Remember his words:
Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation!
But oh! shipmates!
on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight;
and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.
Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low?
Delight is to him-a far, far upward and inward delight-who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth,
ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth.
Delight,-top gallant delight is to him,
who acknowledges no law or lord,
but the Lord his God,
and is only a patriot to heaven.
(Steelkilt sits among his comrades but lights engulph him to make him isolate, alone, as if he sits at the bottom of the sea.)
Jonah: All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge after breaking through the bulkhead below.
(Two harpooners, second mate, third mate keep watch on the forecastle.
Drum Circle in forecastle keep steady mutinous beat going.
Other drum circle maintains metaphorical beat of the pumping of the leaking waters.)
Jonah: But the hours of darkness passed in peace; the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clankings at intervals through the dismal night dismally resounded through the ship. Jonah: At sunrise the Captain went forward.
(Captain, savage harpooners, second mate and third mate go to forecastle. All are armed with large clubs/cudgels.
Savage harpooners are also carrying water containers and one small box of biscuits.
Captain pounds on the floor/deck with a cudgel/big stick.)
Captain: Turn to!
(Steelkilt and his followers give a wild, rebel yell.
The hatch to the forecastle is unlocked.
Water is then lowered down, a couple of biscuits are tossed.
Then the hatch is chained and padlocked.)
Jonah: Twice every day, for three days, this was repeated.
The Captain ordered the insurgents to turn to. The insurgent replied with a gradually waning rebel yell. n the fourth morning a confused wrangling and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and suddenly six men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to.
(Mutiny drum stops.
Six men break from the drum circle. They go through forecastle door/hatch.
They are detained by two savage harpooners. Then marched off-stage. )
Captain: The rest of you scum – Turn to!
Steelkilt: (softly, reasonably) Stop your babbling and betake yourself where you belong!
(Mutiny drum resumes.)
Jonah: The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender. On the fifth morning four others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought to restrain them.
(Mutiny drum stops. Four break from the drum circle as the rest try to hold them back in the forecastle. They flee out of forecastle door/hatch. They are also detained, then marched off-stage.)
Captain: (jeeringly) Better turn to now.
Steelkilt: (softly, reasonably) Shut us up again, will ye.
Captain: Oh! certainly.
(Captain locks the padlock on the forecastle.)
Jonah: It was at this point that enraged by the defection of 10 of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed.
Steelkilt: Let us burst out of this hole the next time the hatch is unlocked. And with these mincing knives (raises a long, crescent, knife blade) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For myself I will do this, whether you join me or not. This is the last night I stay in this hole.
First Canaller: We rise with you!
Second Canaller: We're your men!
First Canaller: We're ready for that.
Second Canaller: Or anything you propose.
First Canaller: We are ready for anything except to surrender! I will be the first man up the ladder.
Second Canaller: I will be the first up the ladder!
First Canaller: What are you talking about. I'm the man!
Second Canaller: I'm the one for it!
Steelkilt: (conclusively, authoritatively) This is for me to do! I will be the first up the ladder.
(Light fades from the forecastle. Is on piazza of the Golden Inn.)
Jonah: And here the foul play of these miscreants, these Erie Canallers must come out.
Don Pedro: Pardon, Senor Jonah, Canallers?
We have seen many whale-ships in our harbor, Callao, but we have never heard of your Canallers.
Jonah: Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You must have heard of it?
Don Pedro: Nay, Senor, hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy and hereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous North.
Jonah: Aye? Well then if I can get my cup refilled.
(Duena Maria refills glass).
Jonah: Your chicha's very fine, Maria.
I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such information may throw side-light upon my story.
For three hundred and sixty miles through the entire breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivaled for fertility; by billiard-room and bar-room; through the holy-of-holy's of great forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties; and especially, by rows of snow white chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. There's your true Ashantee; there howl your pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronizing lee of churches. For by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners most abound in holiest vicinities.
(Don Sebastian looks downward into the crowded plazza with humorous concern.)
Don Pedro: (jokingly) Is that a friar passing?
Don Sebastian: (Laughing) Well for our northern friend, and well for us that Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in Lima. Proceed, Senor.
Another Don: A moment! Pardon!
In the name of all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison.
(Jonah bows, and feins surprise.)
Another Don: Oh! do not bow and look surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast-"Corrupt as Lima." It but bears out your saying too; churches more plentiful then billiard-tables, and for ever open – and "Corrupt as Lima." So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St. Mark! –St. Dominic purge it! Your cup!
(Another Don reaches for Jonah's cup. Jonah hands cup to Don.)
Another Don: Thanks, here I refill.
(He takes and refills Jonah's cup from his cup, hands it back to Jonah.)
Another Don: Now, you pour out again.
(Jonah drinks deeply, ponders a moment.)
Jonah: Freely depicted in his own vocation the Canaller would make a fine dramatic character, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he.
(Lights fade from piazza. Go on in area of stage where the two canallers, dressed foppishly stroll with young female innocents, now corrupted. They parade decorously.)
Jonah: Like Mark Anthony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck.
But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed.
(Women leave stage. Canallers stalk stage with hands on their long knives.)
Jonah: The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities.
(The canallers encounter a young man - a recognizably younger version of Jonah - being accosted and robbed by a gang of thugs.
As Jonah gives this narrative aside, the canallers pull their long knives, rescue the young man from his assailants and continue their stalking of the stage.)
Jonah: Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one.
(Two Canallers leave stage.
Light fades from this part of stage.
Goes on piazza at Golden Inn.)
Jonah: In sum, what the wildness of this canal life is, is emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whalefishery 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 between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas.
Don Pedro: (meditively)I see! I see! No need to travel! The world's one Lima.
I had thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold and holy as the hills.
Don Pedro: But the story.
(Light fades from piazza.
Goes on in forecastle.
Steelkilt and the two canallers prepare to sleep.)
Jonah: Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece of treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out, in order to be the first of the three, though the last of the twelve, to surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit.
But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of villainy, mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when their leader fell into a doze, verbally opened their soul to each other in three sentences.
(Steelkilt falls asleep.)
First Canaller: The hell with this!
Second Canaller: Let's do it!
First Canaller: Let's get it done!
(The canallers rush Steelkilt. Bind him with cords, gag him.)
Canallers: (together cravenly yelling) Captain! Captain! Come quickly!
Jonah: Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, the Captain and all his armed mates and harpooners rushed for the forecastle.
(Captain and his men do as Jonah says.
Forecastle door is unchained and opened,
the still struggling Steelkilt is thrown by the canallers before the Captain.)
First Canaller: I did it!
Second Canaller: I did it! I bound him and stopped one who was fully ripe for murder.
Captain: Bound 'em, all! Collar 'em.
That's right drag 'em like dead cattle.
Seize 'em up in the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat.
(two savage harpooners, second mate, and third mate do as Captain says. They are bound. Put into wooden collars and hoisted up into the 'Town-Ho's' riggings.)
Jonah: And there they hung till morning.
(light fades)
Act IV, Scene 1
(The stage is split.On one side is the piazza of the Golden Inn.
On the other stage are Steelkilt, and the two canallers, on both sides of him, collared hanging in the riggings. All the crew and the officers of the Town Ho are assembled in ranks before them. The lights are on the 'Town-Ho)
Captain: Damn Ye!
(He paces back and forth in front of Steelkilt and the two Canallers.)
Captain: The vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!
(to the officers and harpooners) Separate out those who rebelled!
(The ten in Steelkilt's water pumper/drum circle, with cuffs and blows are roughly separated from the rest of the crew by the two savage harpooners, the second officer, the third officer. )
Captain: I have a good mind to flog ye all around.
I ought to.
Justice demands it!
(Captain paces deck in front of Steelkilts men.)
Captain: But for the present. Considering your timely surrender. (pauses) I'll let you go with a reprimand.
You are villains and mutinous dogs! Do not ever try me again, for if there is a next time you will wish you were flogged.But as for you, ye carrion rogues (turning to the three men in the rigging) for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots.
(Captain seizes a large whip and applies it with all his might on the backs of the cravenly yelling and whimpering Canallers, one after the other, until they yell and whimper no more, but bloodied they lifelessly hang.)
Captain: My wrist is sprained wih ye!
But there is still enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up.
Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself.
(Steelkilt's gag is removed by the second mate. He makes a tremulous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twists round his head.)
Steelkilt: (hissingly) What I say is this – and mind it well – if you flog me, I murder you!
Captain: Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me.
(Captain draws off with the whip to strike.)
Steelkilt: (hissingly) Best not.
Captain: But I must!
(Captain draws the whip back. Steelkilt hisses something that is inaudible to all but the Captain. Captain steps back, startled. Then agitatedly paces the deck. He suddenly throws down the whip.)
Captain: I won't do it – let him go – cut him down; d'ye hear?
(Astonished second and third mates begin to untie Steelkilt. But a pale, jaw-bandaged Radney appears on stage.
He makes unintelligible sounds at first as he painfully works broken, bandaged jaw. But then haltingly, slowly says to the Captain.)
Radney: I'm willing and able to do what you can't.
(Picks up whip, and advances on Steelkilt.)
Steelkilt: (hissingly) You are a coward!
Radney: So I am, but take that.
(Radney is posed to strike with his whip. Steelkilt hisses something which is only audible to Radney. Radney is also startled. He stays his uplifted arm. He freezes with uplifted whip in tableau. Light fades from 'Town-Ho', goes on in piazza.)
Duena Maria: So what said Steelkilt that made the captain drop his scourge, and what stayed Radney's wrathful, hateful hand?
Jonah: What was said was only heard by the Captain and Radney. But I know what was said.
No sin against man is beyond forgiveness.
Blaspheme against the father,
Blaspheme against the son,
and it will be forgiven.
But whosoever blasphemes and sins against the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven.
God's wrath forever rests upon him.
(Light goes back on 'Town-Ho' and Radney with uplifted whip. He whips Steelkilt to bloody, unconsciousness. It is a horrible passion. Lights fade.)
Scene 2
(Lights are on the 'Town-Ho'.)
Jonah: The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps clanged as before.
(The beat of the water pumpers/drummers is now sullen/angry but is still recognizeable as the metaphor for the pumping of the water.)
Jonah: Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the crew.
(Two canallers pursued by the 10 men of Steelkilt's drum circle run and kneel at the feet of the Captain, cravenly begging for protection. Captain in contempt cuffs, and kicks them.)
Jonah: Cuffs and kicks could not drive them back. So at their own insistence the Captain put them down in the ship's run for salvation.
(Canallers are roughly taken from stage by two savage harpooners, second mate and third mate.)
Jonah: Still, no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship reached port, desert her in a body.
But in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing – namely, not to sing out for whales, in 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 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.
(Radney sits on a ship's railing. And leans his arm upon a depiction of a whale boat hoisted above the ship's railing. He appears to fall asleep.)
Jonah: 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.
(Steelkilt comes on stage, sits on the floor, begins braiding a kind of sling. One of Steelkilt's Men approaches him.)
Jonah: At his leisure, he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his watches below.
One of Steelkilt's Men: What are you making there?
Steelkilt: What do you think? What does it look like?
One of Steelkilt's Men: Like a lanyard for your bag.But it's an odd one, seems to me.
Steelkilt: Yes, rather oddish.
(Steelkilt holds it at arm's length before him. )
Steelkilt: But I think it will answer.
Shipmate I haven't enough twine. Have you any?
One of Steelkilt's Men: I have none and I know there isn't any in the foc'sle.
Steelkilt: Then I must get some from old Rad.
(Steelkilt rises, starts walking towards Radney, who has just appeared on deck with his still bandaged broken jaw.)
One of Steelkilt's Men: (Whispering loudly after Steelkilt.) You don't mean to go a begging to him!
Steelkilt: Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help himself in the end, shipmate?
(Steelkilt goes up to Radney. Looks at him humbly and mildly)
Steelkilt: Have ye any twine to mend my hammock?
(Radney grudgingly, suspiciously hands him the twine.)
Jonah: It was given him – neither twine nor halyard were seen again. But the next night an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent helm – nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always readydug 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.
(Radney sits on railing of the ship. Leans his arm on the depiction of the whale boat. And falls asleep. Steelkilt comes on stage. Begins swinging the cannon ball in its sling as he walks towards Radney.)
Jonah: But a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody deed he had planned.
(Stupid Teneriffe Man comes on stage with a slop bucket. He begins to throw the slops overboard. But is startled by what he sees. He puts down the slop bucket.)
Stupid Teneriffe Man: (Shouts out in spite of himself.) There she rolls! There she rolls!By Cheese-Us, It's the Bloody White Whale. By God! Have ya ever seen anything like that! It's Moby Dick!
(Steelkilt conceals cannon ball and sling in his jacket. Light fades from 'Town-Ho. Goes on piazza.)
Jonah: Yet complete revenge Steelkilt 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.
Don Sebastian: Moby Dick! St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?
Jonah: A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;- but more of this I'll tell later.
(All in the Golden Inn, accept Duena Maria, and Duena Catherina, are on their feet crowding around Jonah, insisting that he tell more of Moby Dick. Jonah wears a pale, awe-struck, dreadful countenance as he remembers.
Duena Maria rises from her chair and whispers something to Don Sebastian and Don Pedro. Who then gently separates Jonah from the people entreating him to tell more.)
Don Sebastian: The chicha! the chicha! Our vigorous friend from the north looks faint; - fill up his empty glass, give him some air!
(Duena Maria and Duena Catharina minister to Jonah. They refill his glass with chicha. Help his shaking hands raise the cups to his lips.)
Jonah: (now composed) One moment, and I proceed.
(a long, meditative moment)
Jonah: Now, so suddenly perceiving the snowy white whale within fifty yards of the ship – forgetful of the compact among the crew – in the excitement of the moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a frenzy. The White Whale – the White Whale! was the cry from Captain, mates, and harpooners, who, undeterred by fearful rumors, were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea.
A strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted.
(Lights fade from the piazza. Go on fully crewed whale boat. Steelkilt is bow oarsman, Radney, with his still bandaged jaw, and his harpoon, is at the stern. All are straining at their oars.)
Jonah: The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got the start; and none howled more fiercely with delight than Steelkilt.
(The men in the boat give a savage, fierce battle cry.)
Jonah: After a stiff pull, their harpooner got fast, and spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow.
(It happens on the boat as it is described by Jonah. The movements of the men in the whaleboat are accurate, athletic, historically authentic. Radney must go over all the straining oarsmen to get to the bow. The boat is in a maelstrom of strobe lights. The presence of Moby Dick is indicated by a brightening blue-white light, and a billowing white cloth. All in the whale boat are in their own individual posture of being in the presence of the mystery.)
Jonah: He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was...
Radney: Pull! pull! Beach me on his topmost back!
Jonah: Nothing loath, his bowman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together.
(Lights fade. All is dark. Then a brilliant white light engulphs the whale boat, and the billowing white cloth. The boat and the crew and the billowing white cloth come together.)
Jonah: 'til of a sudden the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate.
(Radney falls away from the boat into the billowing cloth. The lights fade from whale boat and the billowing white cloth.)
Jonah: That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high with him, plunged headlong again, and went down.
Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden terrific, downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He cut it; and the whale was free.
(Steelkilt cuts rope with knife. The billowing white cloth with small red splatter returns. Men in boat watch it in dreadful awe.)
Jonah: But, at some distance Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woolen shirt, caught in the teeth that had destroyed him.
All four boats gave chase again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.
(Lights go out on whale boat. Go on piazza.)
Jonah: In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port – a savage, solitary place – where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremast-men deliberately deserted among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.
The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain called upon the islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting vigilance over their dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them in so heavy a vessel.
After taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the ship as far from shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best whaleboat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew.
On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it; but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under water.
The Captain presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.
(Lights go on the fully manned whaleboat, with sail, with the Captain, and his drawn pistol at the bow.)
Captain: What do you want of me?
Steelkilt: (off stage) Where are you bound? And for what are you bound? No lies!
Captain: I am bound for Tahiti for more men.
Steelkilt: (off stage)Very good. Let me board you a moment – I come in peace.
(Steelkilt climbs aboard whale boat from the back side of stage. He stands face to face with the Captain.)
Steelkilt: Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head.
(Captain does as he is told.)
Steelkilt: Now repeat after me.
As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightenings strike me!
Captain: (Laughs. Has arms crossed and head tilted back.) I will not swear, or forswear, or make oaths. But because I know what is hidden in plain sight in the Holy Evangelists, I will only answer yea or nay.Yea, as soon as you leave me, I will beach this boat on yonder island, and remain there six days. And yea I know there is no forgiveness, that I will be stricken by lightening, or Moby Dick, himself if I sin or blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.
Steelkilt: (laughing joyously) A pretty scholar.Adios, Senor!
(He goes over the side, as the lights go out on whale-boat. Goes on piazza.)
Jonah: Watching the boat till it was fairly beached and drawn up to the roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time arrived in Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were providentially in want of precisely that number of men which the sailor headed. They embarked; and so for ever got the start of their former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal retribution.
Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all right there, again resumed his cruisings.
Where Steelkilt now is, none know; but upon the island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses to give up its dead; still in dreams see the awful white whale that destroyed him.
Act V, Scene 1
(The Piazza of the Golden Inn)
Don Sebastian: (quietly) Are you through?
Jonah: I am.
Don Sebastian: Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions, this your story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful! Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press.
Duena Maria: Also bear with all of us; for we all join in Don Sebastian's suit.
Jonah: Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn?
Don Sebastian: Nay, but I know a worthy priest nearby, who will quickly procure one for me. I go for it. But are you well advised? This may grow too serious.
Jonah: Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?
Another Don: (to other Don) Though there are no Auto-da-Fes in Lima now, I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no need for this.
(Jonah runs after Don Sebastian)
Jonah: Excuse me for running after you; but may I also beg that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists you can.
(lights fade)
Scene 2
(The Golden Inn as seen in Act 1, Scene 1. There is a flurry of activity. The Ahkolonas are setting up an Ayahuasca altar. Jonah watches activity with interest. Duena Maria and Duena Caharina mix materials, while singing incantation song. At the end of the song they have a large bottle full of a foamy, chocolate colored thick liquid.After the song all gather around the altar. )
Duena Maria: (to Jonah) This is a great medicine. A gift of grace from a mortal who conquered death and became immortal. God gives true instruction, he gives Immortal Truth, true revelation in the song that Ayahuasca sings.
(Duena Maria and the goddesses sing a joyous Ayahuasca song. She pours individual doses of Ayahuasca and offers the krater to everyone in the circle around the altar. All drink from the krater. Jonah drinks deeply from the krater.)
Jonah: (Ecstatically) Awe moves in my soul!
The terrible fatality.
Fatality.
Doom.
Doom!
Something whispers it.
(whisperingly) Doom!
Doom of what?
Doom of our white day.
We are doomed,
Doomed!
And the doom is in America.
(pauses)
Jonah: Ah, well, if my day is doomed, and I am doomed with my day, it is something greater than I which dooms me.
So I accept my doom as a sign of the greatness which is more than I am.
(pauses)
Jonah: I am not bound to any haven ahead.
But rushing from all havens astern.
(pauses then shouts)
Jonah: Moby Dick!
Who is He!
You want to know, who?
What is Moby Dick?
(pauses)
Jonah:(softly, whisperingly) He is the last ghastly hunt.
He is the deepest blood being of the white race,
Our deepest blood nature.
And he is hunted,
hunted, by the maniacal fanaticism of our rational,
scientific,
desperately common-sensible consciousness.
We must hunt him down.To subject him to our will.We enlist all races in this maniacal hunt of our-selves.
Dark races and pale,red, yellow, and black, east and west, Quaker and fire-worshipper
in this hunt which is our doom and our suicide.
Hot blooded sea-born Moby Dick.Hunted by monomaniacs of the rational, scientific, material idea.
(pauses)
Jonah: (loud, shouting)But He will not be destroyed! Will go where he will go!
Oh God!
Oh God!
What next, when the 'Pequod' has sunk.
She sank in the war, and we are all flotsam.
Now what next.Who knows?
Quien sabe?
(softly)Quien sabe?
(shouting) The 'Pequod' went down. And the 'Pequod' was the ship of the white American soul. She sank, taking with her blackman and Indian and Polynesian,
Asiatic and Quaker
and good common-sensible,business-like Yankees
and Ishmael.
And the master of this fallen world is judged, condemned,And overthrown!
(Don Sebastian returns with savage Ayahuasca priest/shaman, with hugh Bible.)
Don Sebastian: This is the priest. He is a Holy Evangelist. He brings you the biggest book of the Holy Evangelists in all of Lima. He brings you what is hidden in plain sight in the Holy Evangelists.
Jonah: (collecting himself, pausing) Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.
Because I know what is hidden in plain sight in the book of the Holy Evangelists I will not swear but will say Yea. Such things may seem incredible;
but, however wondorous, they are true.
(Lights fade.)
THE EYES OF THE WORLD:Introduction to The MutinyBy Richard Reeve
I'm not going to hold back any punches. The Mutiny is an important event in the life of the myth that Herman Melville unleashed in Moby Dick.
By boring down into the 'The Town-Ho's Story', Chapter 53 in 'Moby Dick, and hauling it to the stage, Sam Libby has cut into the heart of the fullest reading of the myth. And The Mutiny is eminently stageable. Any posse of players with enough integrity to pull off Shakespeare will find herein a full plate of the cathartic mystery.
But before we explore the mutiny as it stands alone, lets try to get a handle on the importance of the 'The Town-Ho Story' chapter within Moby Dick.
Through a deep look into Melville's marginalia, Charles Olson was able to discover where Melville sensed the American myth was headed. In Call Me Ishmael we learn that there was a projected sequel (not unlike Dostoevsky's intended but never written sequel to The Brothers Karamozov) to be titled Eclipse, with its mythic foundation in Noah after the flood, or post-apocalyptic world, based on the story of Capt. Pollard of the ill fated Nantucket whaler Essex.
Indeed, the narrative force generated throughout Moby Dick is based in and draws its uncanny omniscient qualities from Ishmael's post-apocalyptic awareness. It's an attention so melded into the fabric of unfolding events that it reveals the experience of transcendence. The Transcendentalists only pointed at the selfsame mystery.
To see the innovation, one needs to stop placing Ahab and his monomaniacal flaw at the center of the tragedy. Instead, we need to recognize Ishmael's transformation from the anemic voice slinking out of Manhattan at the onset to the powerful troubadour that narrates the story of Steelkilt from the Golden Inn. Here is the only glimpse we get of the post-apocalyptic Ishmael and its buried in the middle of the book. On that late night veranda, that eve of one saint's day, we encounter first hand the figure that was to have emerged in Eclipse, a figure of Noah after the flood, or as Libby has accurately seen, a Jonah.
Here is the storyteller, confident, in control of his material and his audience, creating a transfixed atmosphere infused with an epic stature. Here alone our minds eye is presented with the new man, reborn through the maelstrom of apocalypse, living in a world of a different order.
There are literary precedents. Consider Odysseus telling of his journey after the lovely fair-ankled Nausikka takes him to her father the King. The Greek hero infuses his audience with a similar quality of awe and wonder, but Ishmael goes a step further.
His power is not limited to or dependant upon autobiography. His journey has led to an analogical awareness that transcends the limits of his own story. In his catastrophic experience emerges the ability to identify fully with the meaning in the stories of others. Out of Ishmael's recognition of the mythic depths that move through himself and other develops the sanction to become a mouthpiece of the living story, the story of the world. I go so far as to make the claim that in Ishmael Melville has defined a new order of hero, the hero of observation.
Olson defines cosmology in Poetry and Truth as "a spiritual condition I think many people in this room have already known in other ways, which is to get around the other side of the nature of anything, especially, like, what we now can call our experience and not mean something that is subjective, but is common." A full reading of Moby Dick sees that it is Ishmaels getting to the other side, his cosmology job, especially in reference to the "boring" chapters, those digressions from the narrative which many a student has complained about, that makes the emergence of the new man possible. To this end Libby has done well preserving the sense of digression in The Righteous Mutiny.
"The Town-Ho's Story" lives within Moby Dick as a separate, autonomous entity, the facts of which were kept from Ahab and the mates. It's amazing to me how it has been missed or glossed over by Melville's commentators. This secret tale presents a distinct resolution from the Pequod's inevitable confrontation between the white whale and its enemy.
In Steelkilt's story all the vague spiritual attributions previously assigned to the whale get solidified into an omnipotent avenging arm of justice. The tale of Steelkilt's mutiny shows that not all men are the enemy of the white whale. In fact leviathan becomes the avenger for Steelkilt, the whole man living in harmony with the cosmos.
The Righteous Mutiny sets on stage a passageway to the post-apocalyptic world unlike Ishmael's fairytale like last second salvation upon Queequeg's coffin/life buoy. A man true to his higher Self, who gets hauled up the mast himself a Christ in the face of infectious petty tyranny that defines our warped social order, this man the Cosmos will defend, preserve and set into a new world the rest of us are still clamoring to reach.
Libby's rendering of the Golden Inn realizes more completely than Melville's the new world.Those who suffer from imaginative cramps while hiding beneath the moniker 'purist' will detest what they will perceive as Libby's imposition of the woman. To this end note that Melville makes it clear that it's chicha, not wine being consumed, and I'd encourage that before any lynching gangs are sent this way, they make a short inquiry into the fermentation process that makes the corn yield.
It is here that the imaginative window broadens not for the sake of Moby Dick, but for the life of the myth. Libby unlocks Melville's hints. The result allows the play to carry on the myth autonomously, into the new reality, as it must.
We are being swamped daily with the constellation of the archetype of the apocalypse. We can't overlook Jung's insight into acausal meaning in synchronicity.
The seamless insertion of D. H. Lawrence's insights into Jonah's ayahuasca vision puts on stage perhaps the most important question America has faced since day one.
What happens when the Pequod goes down?
It's a question we'd better start taking seriously. Obviously its still a toss up. Either the whole show gets sucked down the tubes or perhaps a few will escape on some unexpected life buoys. But to what end?
Let us turn to a passage near the end of Lawrence's Apocalypse which provides a cosmological frame to what so clearly stands out in Steelkilt and Ishmael/Jonah's presence, and possibility our modern world desperately denies, resists, opposes and undermines as the new birth.
"What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his 'soul.' Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea."
AUTHORS PREFACE
Herman Melville unleashed the Greatest, White-est, Whale of an American Myth.
All serious High American Culture, since, has been the lowering of whaleboats - life/ death struggle with IT - the oceanic mystery that surrounds and pervades the human condition.
The Pequod and most all of the other ships in 'Moby Dick' are undeniably American vessels. And these American vessels/containers are the places where humanity is experiencing its further possibilities. They are fulfilling the further brutal possibilities of early American industrial civilization. But they are also places where it is possible to envision humanity's further experiental, existential powers.
This isn't a political or social or economic process. It is an Emersonian, American Transcendental, Experiencing, Knowing. This is what is happening to Ishmael/Jonah in the only part of the novel that occurs after the death of Ahab and the sinking of the Pequod.
It is happening at the Golden Inn in Lima, Peru, after Ishmael/Jonah has been rescued by the 'Rachel' and we can surmise, after the 'Rachel', soon after, went to Lima's port of Callao to enlist replacements for her lost crew-members.
As he is coming into his further possibilities, his further powers, Ishmael/Jonah narrates The Greatest, White-est Whale of an American Myth. The Golden Inn is the place where he is entering into the further possibilities of the human vocation. He starts by telling the story of the Steelkilt Mutiny.
The Revolutionary, Heretical, Gnostic, Transcendental Experiencing, Knowing of Melville is that it was never about being Christians it was always about realizing the further human potential of being a Christ. This is what the story of the Steelkilt Mutiny is about. This is why Ishmael/Jonah begins the first public narrative of his experiencing of The Myth with Steelkilt's story.
The denying of the mystery is the denying of death. And denying death is denying life. Steelkilt's story, Ishmael's/Jonah's parable is about the right posture in the face of mystery, in the face of life-its-ownself, and the not-business-as-usual. Mysteries will always be mysteries. The Prophet Melville accepted, embraced, opened himself to the mystery - as a mystery. He did not deny it with a religious, magic, folk-tale.
In the telling of the parable of The Mutiny Ishmael/Jonah/Melville face into the storm, face into the great oceanic mystery that surrounds and pervades the human condition. And in so doing they acquire more life in life in a time and space that goes beyond all known boundaries of the human circumstances, the human possibilities. This is where Steelkilt and Ishmael begin their ministries. And this is where the mutiny begins.
CAST:
Ishmael/Jonah
Buffalo/Steelkilt
Radney
Captain
1st Erie Canaller
2nd Erie Canaller
1st Savage Harpooner
2nd Savage Harpooner
Second Mate
Third Mate
10 mutineers/drummers/water pumpers.
One of Steelkilt's Men: a drummer/water pumper loyal to Steelkilt.
Three cabin boys (who are neutral)
Nine other crew members that do not join sides
Eight crew members that join with two harpooners, second mate and third mate on side of the captain, drummers for business-as-usual.
The Stupid Teneriffe Man: One of the men who stay loyal to the Captain.
A pig.
Duena Maria
Duena Catherina
Five other Akhalonas (beautiful women chosen by the Incan mysteries)
Don Pedro (an Incan nobleman)
Don Sebastian (an Incan nobleman)
three other Duenas (Incan noblewomen)
two recently corrupted young women from the banks of the Erie Canal
a young man resembling Jonah who is accosted and being robbed
Act I, Scene 1
(At the Golden Inn - Just as the Moby Dick world is a relentlessly male world, the Golden Inn is a relentlessly female place.
It is also an Incan place. It is an Incan Temple, of the Ahkolona, the chosen women, women chosen by the Incan mysteries. It is a temple to the wild, entheogenic, bacchus mysteries. And there is no contradiction in that the Golden Inn is a chicha or corn beer brewery/pub/ live-music venue/urban club.
Chicha, (which means spit in Spanish), is fermented by the saliva of women. The sacred chicha was fermented and brewed by the Ahkolona for the Incan royalty and nobility.The curtain opens with the seven sisters on the Golden Inn's stage. Outside a tropical, thunder storm rages. The sisters are singing, drumming, and opening sacred space. Their song is also about facing into the storm, facing into the mystery. In the moment when the song and drumming, and dancing ends there is a strong, rhythmic knocking on a strong, wooden, speak-easy door that has a metal slit at eye level.
Duena Maria goes to the door, opens the metal slit on the door to see who is on the other side of the door. There is a long pause.Duena Maria steps back as she opens the door to wet Jonah/Ishmael and The Buffalo/Steelkilt.
They enter.The Buffalo is a young, bearded Nordic Giant.
Jonah is older, dark, smaller.
They both have the fitness and athleticism that would be expected of 19th Century whalers. Jonah carries a small, canvas duffel bag. Duena Maria and Duena Catherina help them get their wet foul weather gear off.
They bring towels and help them dry themselves.
Duena Maria has a sister-like resemblence to Jonah, Duena Catherina has a sister-like resemblence to The Buffalo.)
Duena Catherina: Who are you? Are you pirates or angels?
The Buffalo: Mariners, and hunters of leviathan, Madame.
Jonah: We seek an honest and good household.
Duena Maria: You have found one, gentlemen. But wouldn't you be more comfortable at the waterfront establishments in Callao where your colleagues always gather?
Jonah: We are here not as a shore-leave, not because of coincidence or happenstance. We are here because it is meant that we be here. Our footsteps have been directed here.
Duena Maria: For what purpose, senor?
Jonah: To tell of oceanic revelations, to speak truth to the face of power, to bring good news.
Duena Maria: We try not to come, needlessly, to the attention of cruel and rapacious rulers.
(Duena Maria pauses for a long moment.)
Duena Maria: But this is such a place.
(Duena Catherina brings trays with glasses of chicha.
The Buffalo, Jonah drink with thirst.)
Duena Maria: (to Jonah) Que se llama? What are you called, senor?
Jonah: Call me Jonah.
Duena Maria: An ill-omened name for a mariner.
Jonah: A joyous name for a man to be called.
Duena Catherina (to The Buffalo) And you, senor?
The Buffalo: Call me The Buffalo.
Duena Maria: Such quaint names you Americanos go by.
Will you both be staying with us?
The Buffalo: My shipmate will. But I must return to the 'Rachel.'
Duena Catherina: Well finish your chicha, and be at your ease Senor Buffalo.
(Duena Maria and Jonah go to an edge of the stage. Jonah in a practiced seamen-like way hangs his simple, sailor's hammock, as he talks to Duena Maria.)
Duena Catherina: (to The Buffalo) Who is your friend? What manner of man is he?
The Buffalo: He is the only survivor of the Nantucket Whale-Ship 'Pequod,' which was stove-in and sunk by a great, white, Spermaceti Whale.
He is a prophet, one who brings oceanic revelations.
(Pause while Duena Catherina considers this, while closely appraising the Buffalo.)
Duena Catherina: And what manner of man are you?
The Buffalo: I am a Lakesman from the United States of America, from the state of New York, from the city of Buffalo.
Duena Catherina: Lakesman? What is a Lakesman?
The Buffalo: Well in North America are these great inland seas which, although landlocked, they are traversed in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well nigh as large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far Manila.
Although born far from the mighty Atlantic and Pacific Oceans I have been nurtured by agrarian free-booting impressions popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours-Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan,-possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of climes.
They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted all around their banks; here and there are frowned upon with batteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the fleet thundering of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer, and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew.
Duena Catherina: I did not know of this wild geography of el Norte.
But why do you wax so long and so poetic about your birth place?
Buffalo: You asked me what manner of man, I am. I'm trying to give you as complete and honest an answer as I can.
I'm telling you that though I am an inlander, I am wild-ocean born, as audacious a mariner as any.
Duena Catherina: I thank you for your attentiveness to my question.
The Buffalo: I hope you will be as attentive when I now ask you, what manner of woman are you?
Duena Catherina: I am of the Ahkolona, the women chosen by the Incan mysteries.
For three hundred years we have concealed our selves from the Spanish and the terror of their blasphomous Inquisition so that our sacred mysteries will continue.
The Buffalo: I think ye for your attentiveness to my question and the honesty of your answer.
Your secret is safe with me.
(takes a long drink from his cup of chicha)
The Buffalo: Presently, I am of the crew of the 'Rachel,' another Nantucket Whale-ship. About three weeks ago, a boat with the Captain's son went missing after a combat with this same great, white whale, which later stoved in and sank the Pequot.
We searched for the missing for over a week. We never found a trace of 'em. But we found Jonah.
He told us when he was a crew-member of the 'Pequod' he was known as Ishmael. But, he says, Ishmael, died with the rest of the crew of the 'Pequod,' and like Jonah, he is directed by a power greater than the natural human to this your Ninevah of Lima. At first my shipmates wanted to cast him overboard. But then he had a wonderful ascendancy with them.
When the grief-sickened Captain finally called off his futile search, we were bound for Callao. And Jonah was always bound for this infamous city of Lima, and this hospitable Golden Inn.
Duena Catherina: How did he know of the Golden Inn?
The Buffalo: The same way he knows of all his revelations and prophecies.
The crew insisted I come with him to ensure he found a safe-harbor, to make sure he wasn't left destitute, to make sure his holiness was recognized and to give you this.
(Buffalo places in Duena Catherina's hand a sack of coins)
Buffalo: He insisted on leaving with nothing more than the shoes on his feet, the clothes on his back, and his hammock. The crew collected this for his board and lodging and anything else he may need.
Duena Catherina: We're honored to receive this holiness. This is not necessary.
(Attempts to return sack of coins. Buffalo gently takes hold of Duena Catherina's hand and closes it over coin sack.)
Buffalo: Please take it.
(Duena Catherina holds on to the bag. The Buffalo drains his glass of chicha.)
Buffalo: I go back into the storm.But I will be back, Catherina, to continue our discussion.
(Buffalo exits. )
Act 1, Scene 2
(The thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn, overlooking Lima, at twilight. It's one saint's eve. Jonah, Don Pedro, Don Sebastian, the seven Ahkolonas and other dons and duenas are smoking aromatic herbs, and drinking chicha.
Don Sebastian is finishing a story to appreciative laughter and mirth.)
Don Pedro:(to Jonah) Senor Mariner tell us of your travels? What brings you to this, our Golden Inn?
Jonah: (Pauses) It is a long story. Most would call this long story a tragedy.
But it begins with a short story of a certain wondrous, inverted, visitation of one of those so-called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men.This short story, which I begin with is the secret, hidden part of this great tragedy which I in the coarse of time will narrate here at the Golden Inn.
As my, now destroyed, ship, the Nantucket whaling ship 'Pequod,' was rounding the southern tip of Africa, on the way to the Pacific Ocean, we encountered the 'Town-Ho', another whaling ship of Nantucket.
It was manned mainly by Polynesians. But during the ensuing gam, the social call between the ships, one of three confederate white seamen told this story to Tashtego – the Wampanoug harpooner on the 'Pequod.'
Duena Maria: Wampanougs? We know so little of our indigenous brothers and sisters of the norte.
Tell us of the Wampanougs.
Jonah: Suffice it to say, Madame, that the Wampanougs were hunters of leviathan long before European ships visited the shores of these, our Americas.
This story was communicated to Tashtego only after he agreed to abide by Romish injunctions of secrecy.
But the following night Tashtego spoke and rambled in his sleep in the forecastle, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest.
So potent an influence did this story have on the seamen who heard it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter that they kept the secret among themselves and it was never revealed to any of the ship's officers. This story never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates.
Interweaving in its proper place this dark thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now begin to put on lasting record.
(lights fade from piazza of the Golden Inn.)
Act II, Scene 1
(The stage is split.
On one side is the piazza of the Golden Inn.
On the other are the crew of the 'Town-Ho'.
The captain is on the bridge. Men are in the riggings. There are men working the windlass.
There is a pig. There are many whale-oil barrels strewn all over the stage. There are three cabin boys in a corner of the stage.
At center of the 'Town-Ho' stage is Steelkilt and his ten person water pumping/drumming crew.
The light is on the piazza at the Golden Inn.)
Jonah: Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about rehearsing to you the 'Town-Ho', was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days' sail eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the northward of the Line.
One morning upon handling the pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold than common.
(Light fades from piazza of Golden Inn. Light goes on 'Town-Ho'.
Water-pumpers/drummers begin drumming a metaphor of pumping water.)
Jonah: They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her. But the captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed they could not find it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came; more days went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among the islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired.
Though no small passage was before him, yet, if the commonest chance favored, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at them, these six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free; never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakesman and desperado from Buffalo.
It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her prow for her island haven, that the 'Town-Ho's' leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward is it altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump handles in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length; that is, if it lie along a tolerable accessible coast, or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters, some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel a little anxious.Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by several of her company; especially by Radney the first mate.
(Radney appears on 'Town-Ho' stage. He is a short, mean-tempered ugly man. He yells orders and cuffs the men when they show a reluctance, in obeying his shouted, overbearing commands.)
Don Pedro: Radney? Tell us of him?
Jonah: Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the beach, to nurse at his maternal northern sea; though in after life he had long followed this our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn handled Bowie-knives.
Yet was this Vineyarder man with some good-hearted traits.
He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehension touching his own person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently imagine. Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a part owner in her.
So when they were working that evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small gamesomeness slyly going on among them, as they stood with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear as any mountain spring, that bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes.
Now as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this world of ours-watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a chance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it.
(Steelkilt rises from the drum circle and unleashes a thunderous, rebellious, mutinous beat.)
Jonah: Also aboard the 'Town Ho' was Steelkilt a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to Charlemagne's father.
This Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt-but, you shall hear.
Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it.
(Radney sneaks up on Steelkilt and his water pumping/druming crew, and goes to a place where he believes he is hidden.
Steelkilt see's Radney. He affects not to notice him.)
Steelkilt: Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one of ye, and let's have a taste.
(Steelkilt is handed a tin cup, pretends to drink deeply.)
Steelkilt: By the Lord, it's worth bottling! I tell ye what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had best cut away his part of the hull and tow it home.
(Other seamen abandon themselves to the mirth. They lag in the drumming that is a metaphor for the pumping of the leaking water.)
Steelkilt: The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only began the job; he's come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the whole 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 invested in looking-glasses.
I wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the model of his nose.
(Men stop drumming in their mirthful laughter.Radney enraged, and hateful emerges from what he believes is a hiding place.)
Radney: Damn your eyes!
(Overbears on One of Steelkilt's men, drummer/water pumper on right side of Steelkilt in drumming circle.)
Radney: (looking down menacingly) You think I'm funny?
(Radney side steps to overbear on the seated Steelkilt.)
Radney: What's the pumps stopped for? Get thundering away at it. Now!
Steelkilt: Aye, aye, sir. (Men resume strenuous, steady, joyous, drumming.)
Steelkilt: Lively, boys, lively, now.
(Drumming becomes percussion of the human engine. Crew of water pumpers/drummers continue the pounding thunderous beat until all in the audience are dancing and all the drummers are gasping for breath. The men quit the drums/pumps and sit together, panting.
Nine other crew members (the neutral crew members) take over the drums and continue the drumming that is a metaphor for the pumping of the water. This drumming continues as a constant background.)
Jonah: Now what cozening fiend it was, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporally exasperated state I know not; but so it happened.
(Radney overbears above Steelkilt, who is reclining on the ships deck.)
Radney: See that pig shit?
(He points to pig shit on the floor.)
Radney: Get a shovel! Then sweep all the deck!
Now!
(Radney and Steelkilt freeze into tableau. Light fades from 'Town-Ho' part of the stage.
Goes on piazza at the Golden Inn).
Jonah: Sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of household 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 is the inflexibility of sea usuages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing their face.
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 Town-Ho 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 mention all these particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood between the two men.
(Light fades from piazza goes on deck of 'Town-Ho, on Steelkilt. Steelkilt is still reclining on floor.)
Jonah: 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 Lakeman fully comprehended when the mate uttered his command.
But as he sat still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked in 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 any already ireful being-a repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men even when aggrieved-this nameless phantom feeling stole over Steelkilt.
Steelkilt: (speaking softly, reasonably, compassionately) Sweeping the deck is not my business, Mr. Radney I will not do it.
(Steelkilt points to the three boys in the corner of the stage.)
Steelkilt: It is their job. They will do it.
Radney: Damn You!
You will do as I command!
Get the shovel!
Now!
(Radney snatches a cooper's hammer from the top of a nearby whale-oil barrel and advances on the still reclining Steelkilt.
Steelkilt sits up.
Radney brandishes the hammer around him, but doesn't touch him.
Steelkilt slowly rises, and slowly retreats to the windlass. Radney follows.
Steelkilt retreats around the windlass.
Radney follows, brandishing the hammer close in but not touching Steelkilt.)
Steelkilt: I will not obey, Mr. Radney.
(Steelkilt draws back his fist. They do a full revolution of windlass like this. Then Steelkilt stops retreating.)
Steelkilt: Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to yourself.
(Radney takes hammer and swings it to a couple of inches of Steelkilt's teeth. Steelkilt doesn't flinch.)
Radney: You will do as I tell you.
Who do you think you are – you bag of shit?
(Steelkilt slowly swings his right fist further behind him.)
Steelkilt: If the hammer but grazes my cheek – you are a dead man.
(Radney immediately touches the hammer to Steelkilt's cheek. Steelkilt instantanously throws a bloody, explosive, lightening strike of a punch.
Radney goes down spouting gore.
Steelkilt looks down at Radney in horror and then he tries fleeing into the riggings of the ship.
The Two Savage Ship Harpooners descend the riggings blocking Steelkilt's way.
Steelkilt leaps down on the stage, is immediately in a fist fight with two ships officers.
The two Erie Canallers swing on ropes to the stage. They go back to back with Steelkilt. They are joined by Steelkilt's ten drummers/water pumper crew.
Steelkilt and the twelve are engulphed by eight crew members who side with the captain, the two savage harpooners, the second and third officers, and the captain.
The three cabin boys and nine water pumpers/drummer stay apart from the melee and are neutral.
The captain armed with a pike ineffectually tries to make his way to where Steelkilt is. But is always being pushed, josled aside.
Steelkilt and his men fight their way to the forecastle.
It is a bloody melee. Steelkilt's people as they fight off the men loyal to the captain also pile up whale barrels in front of the forecastle, until a barricade is made.
Steelkilt and his men break off the fight to go behind the whale-oil barrel barricade.)
Captain of the Town-Ho: Come out of that, ye pirates!
(Captain draws two pistols.)
Captain: Come out of that, ye cut-throats!
(Steelkilt leaps on the whale-oil barrel barricade.)
Steelkilt: Bring it on! Go head, shoot!
But know what you bring on, Captain. You kill me and all will rise.
Captain: Return to your duty, now!
Steelkilt: Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?
Captain: Turn to! turn to!-I make no promises;-to your duty!
Do you want to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!
(Captain raises his pistols.)
Steelkilt: Sink the ship? Aye, let her sink.
Not a man of us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us.
(Steelkilt turns to men behind the barricade.)
Steelkilt: What say ye, men?
(Men give a fierce rebel yell.
Steelkilt walks the top of the barricade.)
Steelkilt: It's not our fault. We didn't want it.
I told him to take his hammer away.
It was boy's business.
He might have known me before this. I told him not to prick the buffalo.
I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw.
(Steelkilt painfully flexes the hand that delivered the blow, as he looks around the ship.)
Steelkilt: Ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men?
Look to those handspikes, my hearties.
Ay Captain, let this dirty, stinking grease-bucket sink. If this is how you're treated for working the ship, working the pumps, for 20 hours in a day
Let her sink.!
Look to yourself, Captain!
Say the word.
Don't be a fool.
Forget it all.
We are ready to turn to. Treat us decently and we are your men.
But we won't be flogged!
Steelkilt: Look ye now.
There are a few of us here, and I am one of them, who have shipped for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don't want a row; it's not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but we won't be flogged!
Captain: Turn to!
Steelkilt: I tell you what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but till you say the word about not flogging us, we won't do a hand's turn of work.
Captain: Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there till you're sick of it. Down ye go.
(Steelkilt turns to the men behind the barricades.)
Steelkilt: Shall we?
(The two Erie Canallers run up to Steelkilt.)
First Canaller: We can take the ship.
Second Canaller: Don't be a fool. Don't go down!
Steelkilt: I will not be hung for being a shabby rascal. Nothing of this world, especially this 'Town-Ho', this dirty, stinking, leaky grease bucket is worth one man's blood, one man's life.
(Steelkilt descends into the forecastle. The men behind the barrier follow, growlingly disappearing like bears into a cave. The two canallers are the last to very reluctantly descend.
As the last canaller descends, the captain and the two harpooners, second mate and third mate leap over the whale oil barrel barricade, slam shut the hatch over the forecastle and chain and padlock it.
Captain opens a slide window, hissingly whispers something which is inaudible to the audience, but is meant to be heard by Steelkilt and his followers.)
Steelkilt: (shouting from inside the forecastle) Who's over me? Truth hath no confines.That which is best and oldest in me – has no master.
(Mutineers begin drumming/singing Bob Marley's 'Get Up, Stand Up'.)
Mutineer Drummers: Get up, stand up, stand up for your right (3 times)
Get up, stand Up, don't give up the fight
Preacher man don't tell me heaven is under the earth
I know you don't know what life is really worth
Is not all that glitters in gold
and half the story has never been told
So now you see the light, aay Stand up for your right.
Come on
Get Up, Stand Up, stand up for your right (three times)
Get Up, Stand Up, don't give up the fight
Some people think great God will come from the sky
Take away ev'rything, and make ev'rybody feel high
But if you know what life is worth
You'd look for yours' right here on earth
And now you see the light
You stand up for your right
Yeah! Get Up, Stand Up, stand up for your right
Get Up, Stand Up, don't give up the fight
We're sick and tired of your ism and skism game
Die and go to heaven in Jesus' name, Lord
We know when we understand
Almighty God is a living man
You can fool some people sometimes
But you can't fool all the people all the time
So now we see the light
We gonna stand up for our right
So you'd better get up, stand up, stand up for your right
Get Up, Stand Up, don't give up the fight
Some people tink that God will come down from the sky
take away ev'rything, and make ev'rybody feel high
But if you know what life is worth
You'd look for yours right here on earth
(Mutiny Drummers don't stop playing until audience is on their feet dancing.
Then they stop drumming.
Lights fade with drummers/ water pumpers/those who remain loyal to the captain, drumming metaphor of pumping the waters that are leaking into the 'Town-Ho'. )
Act III, Scene 1
(Stage is split three ways. There is the piazza and those of the Golden Inn. There is Steelkilt and his 12 followers, in a drum circle in the forecastle. And there is a part of the stage where the Erie Canallers are to be depicted.
These areas of the stage are in the light when the action occurs there.
Lights are on piazza of Golden Inn.)
Duena Maria: So, what said the captain?
Jonah: It was only heard by Steelkilt and the men who went down into the forecastle.
But I know what was said.
It's what the master of this world always says - I am the master of this vessel. I am the master of this fallen world. I am the master of ye.
Who are ye, to challenge me, or anything I do?
(Light fades from piazza of Golden Inn. Goes on Steelkilt and his drum circle, sitting on the floor of the forecastle.)
Steelkilt: Remember Father Mapple at the Whaleman's Chapel in New Bedford.
Remember his words:
Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation!
But oh! shipmates!
on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight;
and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.
Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low?
Delight is to him-a far, far upward and inward delight-who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth,
ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth.
Delight,-top gallant delight is to him,
who acknowledges no law or lord,
but the Lord his God,
and is only a patriot to heaven.
(Steelkilt sits among his comrades but lights engulph him to make him isolate, alone, as if he sits at the bottom of the sea.)
Jonah: All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge after breaking through the bulkhead below.
(Two harpooners, second mate, third mate keep watch on the forecastle.
Drum Circle in forecastle keep steady mutinous beat going.
Other drum circle maintains metaphorical beat of the pumping of the leaking waters.)
Jonah: But the hours of darkness passed in peace; the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clankings at intervals through the dismal night dismally resounded through the ship. Jonah: At sunrise the Captain went forward.
(Captain, savage harpooners, second mate and third mate go to forecastle. All are armed with large clubs/cudgels.
Savage harpooners are also carrying water containers and one small box of biscuits.
Captain pounds on the floor/deck with a cudgel/big stick.)
Captain: Turn to!
(Steelkilt and his followers give a wild, rebel yell.
The hatch to the forecastle is unlocked.
Water is then lowered down, a couple of biscuits are tossed.
Then the hatch is chained and padlocked.)
Jonah: Twice every day, for three days, this was repeated.
The Captain ordered the insurgents to turn to. The insurgent replied with a gradually waning rebel yell. n the fourth morning a confused wrangling and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and suddenly six men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to.
(Mutiny drum stops.
Six men break from the drum circle. They go through forecastle door/hatch.
They are detained by two savage harpooners. Then marched off-stage. )
Captain: The rest of you scum – Turn to!
Steelkilt: (softly, reasonably) Stop your babbling and betake yourself where you belong!
(Mutiny drum resumes.)
Jonah: The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender. On the fifth morning four others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought to restrain them.
(Mutiny drum stops. Four break from the drum circle as the rest try to hold them back in the forecastle. They flee out of forecastle door/hatch. They are also detained, then marched off-stage.)
Captain: (jeeringly) Better turn to now.
Steelkilt: (softly, reasonably) Shut us up again, will ye.
Captain: Oh! certainly.
(Captain locks the padlock on the forecastle.)
Jonah: It was at this point that enraged by the defection of 10 of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed.
Steelkilt: Let us burst out of this hole the next time the hatch is unlocked. And with these mincing knives (raises a long, crescent, knife blade) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For myself I will do this, whether you join me or not. This is the last night I stay in this hole.
First Canaller: We rise with you!
Second Canaller: We're your men!
First Canaller: We're ready for that.
Second Canaller: Or anything you propose.
First Canaller: We are ready for anything except to surrender! I will be the first man up the ladder.
Second Canaller: I will be the first up the ladder!
First Canaller: What are you talking about. I'm the man!
Second Canaller: I'm the one for it!
Steelkilt: (conclusively, authoritatively) This is for me to do! I will be the first up the ladder.
(Light fades from the forecastle. Is on piazza of the Golden Inn.)
Jonah: And here the foul play of these miscreants, these Erie Canallers must come out.
Don Pedro: Pardon, Senor Jonah, Canallers?
We have seen many whale-ships in our harbor, Callao, but we have never heard of your Canallers.
Jonah: Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You must have heard of it?
Don Pedro: Nay, Senor, hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy and hereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous North.
Jonah: Aye? Well then if I can get my cup refilled.
(Duena Maria refills glass).
Jonah: Your chicha's very fine, Maria.
I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such information may throw side-light upon my story.
For three hundred and sixty miles through the entire breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivaled for fertility; by billiard-room and bar-room; through the holy-of-holy's of great forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties; and especially, by rows of snow white chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. There's your true Ashantee; there howl your pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronizing lee of churches. For by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners most abound in holiest vicinities.
(Don Sebastian looks downward into the crowded plazza with humorous concern.)
Don Pedro: (jokingly) Is that a friar passing?
Don Sebastian: (Laughing) Well for our northern friend, and well for us that Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in Lima. Proceed, Senor.
Another Don: A moment! Pardon!
In the name of all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison.
(Jonah bows, and feins surprise.)
Another Don: Oh! do not bow and look surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast-"Corrupt as Lima." It but bears out your saying too; churches more plentiful then billiard-tables, and for ever open – and "Corrupt as Lima." So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St. Mark! –St. Dominic purge it! Your cup!
(Another Don reaches for Jonah's cup. Jonah hands cup to Don.)
Another Don: Thanks, here I refill.
(He takes and refills Jonah's cup from his cup, hands it back to Jonah.)
Another Don: Now, you pour out again.
(Jonah drinks deeply, ponders a moment.)
Jonah: Freely depicted in his own vocation the Canaller would make a fine dramatic character, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he.
(Lights fade from piazza. Go on in area of stage where the two canallers, dressed foppishly stroll with young female innocents, now corrupted. They parade decorously.)
Jonah: Like Mark Anthony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck.
But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed.
(Women leave stage. Canallers stalk stage with hands on their long knives.)
Jonah: The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities.
(The canallers encounter a young man - a recognizably younger version of Jonah - being accosted and robbed by a gang of thugs.
As Jonah gives this narrative aside, the canallers pull their long knives, rescue the young man from his assailants and continue their stalking of the stage.)
Jonah: Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one.
(Two Canallers leave stage.
Light fades from this part of stage.
Goes on piazza at Golden Inn.)
Jonah: In sum, what the wildness of this canal life is, is emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whalefishery 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 between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas.
Don Pedro: (meditively)I see! I see! No need to travel! The world's one Lima.
I had thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold and holy as the hills.
Don Pedro: But the story.
(Light fades from piazza.
Goes on in forecastle.
Steelkilt and the two canallers prepare to sleep.)
Jonah: Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece of treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out, in order to be the first of the three, though the last of the twelve, to surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit.
But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of villainy, mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when their leader fell into a doze, verbally opened their soul to each other in three sentences.
(Steelkilt falls asleep.)
First Canaller: The hell with this!
Second Canaller: Let's do it!
First Canaller: Let's get it done!
(The canallers rush Steelkilt. Bind him with cords, gag him.)
Canallers: (together cravenly yelling) Captain! Captain! Come quickly!
Jonah: Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, the Captain and all his armed mates and harpooners rushed for the forecastle.
(Captain and his men do as Jonah says.
Forecastle door is unchained and opened,
the still struggling Steelkilt is thrown by the canallers before the Captain.)
First Canaller: I did it!
Second Canaller: I did it! I bound him and stopped one who was fully ripe for murder.
Captain: Bound 'em, all! Collar 'em.
That's right drag 'em like dead cattle.
Seize 'em up in the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat.
(two savage harpooners, second mate, and third mate do as Captain says. They are bound. Put into wooden collars and hoisted up into the 'Town-Ho's' riggings.)
Jonah: And there they hung till morning.
(light fades)
Act IV, Scene 1
(The stage is split.On one side is the piazza of the Golden Inn.
On the other stage are Steelkilt, and the two canallers, on both sides of him, collared hanging in the riggings. All the crew and the officers of the Town Ho are assembled in ranks before them. The lights are on the 'Town-Ho)
Captain: Damn Ye!
(He paces back and forth in front of Steelkilt and the two Canallers.)
Captain: The vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!
(to the officers and harpooners) Separate out those who rebelled!
(The ten in Steelkilt's water pumper/drum circle, with cuffs and blows are roughly separated from the rest of the crew by the two savage harpooners, the second officer, the third officer. )
Captain: I have a good mind to flog ye all around.
I ought to.
Justice demands it!
(Captain paces deck in front of Steelkilts men.)
Captain: But for the present. Considering your timely surrender. (pauses) I'll let you go with a reprimand.
You are villains and mutinous dogs! Do not ever try me again, for if there is a next time you will wish you were flogged.But as for you, ye carrion rogues (turning to the three men in the rigging) for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots.
(Captain seizes a large whip and applies it with all his might on the backs of the cravenly yelling and whimpering Canallers, one after the other, until they yell and whimper no more, but bloodied they lifelessly hang.)
Captain: My wrist is sprained wih ye!
But there is still enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up.
Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself.
(Steelkilt's gag is removed by the second mate. He makes a tremulous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twists round his head.)
Steelkilt: (hissingly) What I say is this – and mind it well – if you flog me, I murder you!
Captain: Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me.
(Captain draws off with the whip to strike.)
Steelkilt: (hissingly) Best not.
Captain: But I must!
(Captain draws the whip back. Steelkilt hisses something that is inaudible to all but the Captain. Captain steps back, startled. Then agitatedly paces the deck. He suddenly throws down the whip.)
Captain: I won't do it – let him go – cut him down; d'ye hear?
(Astonished second and third mates begin to untie Steelkilt. But a pale, jaw-bandaged Radney appears on stage.
He makes unintelligible sounds at first as he painfully works broken, bandaged jaw. But then haltingly, slowly says to the Captain.)
Radney: I'm willing and able to do what you can't.
(Picks up whip, and advances on Steelkilt.)
Steelkilt: (hissingly) You are a coward!
Radney: So I am, but take that.
(Radney is posed to strike with his whip. Steelkilt hisses something which is only audible to Radney. Radney is also startled. He stays his uplifted arm. He freezes with uplifted whip in tableau. Light fades from 'Town-Ho', goes on in piazza.)
Duena Maria: So what said Steelkilt that made the captain drop his scourge, and what stayed Radney's wrathful, hateful hand?
Jonah: What was said was only heard by the Captain and Radney. But I know what was said.
No sin against man is beyond forgiveness.
Blaspheme against the father,
Blaspheme against the son,
and it will be forgiven.
But whosoever blasphemes and sins against the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven.
God's wrath forever rests upon him.
(Light goes back on 'Town-Ho' and Radney with uplifted whip. He whips Steelkilt to bloody, unconsciousness. It is a horrible passion. Lights fade.)
Scene 2
(Lights are on the 'Town-Ho'.)
Jonah: The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps clanged as before.
(The beat of the water pumpers/drummers is now sullen/angry but is still recognizeable as the metaphor for the pumping of the water.)
Jonah: Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the crew.
(Two canallers pursued by the 10 men of Steelkilt's drum circle run and kneel at the feet of the Captain, cravenly begging for protection. Captain in contempt cuffs, and kicks them.)
Jonah: Cuffs and kicks could not drive them back. So at their own insistence the Captain put them down in the ship's run for salvation.
(Canallers are roughly taken from stage by two savage harpooners, second mate and third mate.)
Jonah: Still, no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship reached port, desert her in a body.
But in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing – namely, not to sing out for whales, in 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 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.
(Radney sits on a ship's railing. And leans his arm upon a depiction of a whale boat hoisted above the ship's railing. He appears to fall asleep.)
Jonah: 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.
(Steelkilt comes on stage, sits on the floor, begins braiding a kind of sling. One of Steelkilt's Men approaches him.)
Jonah: At his leisure, he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his watches below.
One of Steelkilt's Men: What are you making there?
Steelkilt: What do you think? What does it look like?
One of Steelkilt's Men: Like a lanyard for your bag.But it's an odd one, seems to me.
Steelkilt: Yes, rather oddish.
(Steelkilt holds it at arm's length before him. )
Steelkilt: But I think it will answer.
Shipmate I haven't enough twine. Have you any?
One of Steelkilt's Men: I have none and I know there isn't any in the foc'sle.
Steelkilt: Then I must get some from old Rad.
(Steelkilt rises, starts walking towards Radney, who has just appeared on deck with his still bandaged broken jaw.)
One of Steelkilt's Men: (Whispering loudly after Steelkilt.) You don't mean to go a begging to him!
Steelkilt: Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help himself in the end, shipmate?
(Steelkilt goes up to Radney. Looks at him humbly and mildly)
Steelkilt: Have ye any twine to mend my hammock?
(Radney grudgingly, suspiciously hands him the twine.)
Jonah: It was given him – neither twine nor halyard were seen again. But the next night an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent helm – nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always readydug 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.
(Radney sits on railing of the ship. Leans his arm on the depiction of the whale boat. And falls asleep. Steelkilt comes on stage. Begins swinging the cannon ball in its sling as he walks towards Radney.)
Jonah: But a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody deed he had planned.
(Stupid Teneriffe Man comes on stage with a slop bucket. He begins to throw the slops overboard. But is startled by what he sees. He puts down the slop bucket.)
Stupid Teneriffe Man: (Shouts out in spite of himself.) There she rolls! There she rolls!By Cheese-Us, It's the Bloody White Whale. By God! Have ya ever seen anything like that! It's Moby Dick!
(Steelkilt conceals cannon ball and sling in his jacket. Light fades from 'Town-Ho. Goes on piazza.)
Jonah: Yet complete revenge Steelkilt 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.
Don Sebastian: Moby Dick! St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?
Jonah: A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;- but more of this I'll tell later.
(All in the Golden Inn, accept Duena Maria, and Duena Catherina, are on their feet crowding around Jonah, insisting that he tell more of Moby Dick. Jonah wears a pale, awe-struck, dreadful countenance as he remembers.
Duena Maria rises from her chair and whispers something to Don Sebastian and Don Pedro. Who then gently separates Jonah from the people entreating him to tell more.)
Don Sebastian: The chicha! the chicha! Our vigorous friend from the north looks faint; - fill up his empty glass, give him some air!
(Duena Maria and Duena Catharina minister to Jonah. They refill his glass with chicha. Help his shaking hands raise the cups to his lips.)
Jonah: (now composed) One moment, and I proceed.
(a long, meditative moment)
Jonah: Now, so suddenly perceiving the snowy white whale within fifty yards of the ship – forgetful of the compact among the crew – in the excitement of the moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a frenzy. The White Whale – the White Whale! was the cry from Captain, mates, and harpooners, who, undeterred by fearful rumors, were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea.
A strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted.
(Lights fade from the piazza. Go on fully crewed whale boat. Steelkilt is bow oarsman, Radney, with his still bandaged jaw, and his harpoon, is at the stern. All are straining at their oars.)
Jonah: The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got the start; and none howled more fiercely with delight than Steelkilt.
(The men in the boat give a savage, fierce battle cry.)
Jonah: After a stiff pull, their harpooner got fast, and spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow.
(It happens on the boat as it is described by Jonah. The movements of the men in the whaleboat are accurate, athletic, historically authentic. Radney must go over all the straining oarsmen to get to the bow. The boat is in a maelstrom of strobe lights. The presence of Moby Dick is indicated by a brightening blue-white light, and a billowing white cloth. All in the whale boat are in their own individual posture of being in the presence of the mystery.)
Jonah: He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was...
Radney: Pull! pull! Beach me on his topmost back!
Jonah: Nothing loath, his bowman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together.
(Lights fade. All is dark. Then a brilliant white light engulphs the whale boat, and the billowing white cloth. The boat and the crew and the billowing white cloth come together.)
Jonah: 'til of a sudden the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate.
(Radney falls away from the boat into the billowing cloth. The lights fade from whale boat and the billowing white cloth.)
Jonah: That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high with him, plunged headlong again, and went down.
Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden terrific, downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He cut it; and the whale was free.
(Steelkilt cuts rope with knife. The billowing white cloth with small red splatter returns. Men in boat watch it in dreadful awe.)
Jonah: But, at some distance Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woolen shirt, caught in the teeth that had destroyed him.
All four boats gave chase again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.
(Lights go out on whale boat. Go on piazza.)
Jonah: In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port – a savage, solitary place – where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremast-men deliberately deserted among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.
The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain called upon the islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting vigilance over their dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them in so heavy a vessel.
After taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the ship as far from shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best whaleboat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew.
On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it; but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under water.
The Captain presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.
(Lights go on the fully manned whaleboat, with sail, with the Captain, and his drawn pistol at the bow.)
Captain: What do you want of me?
Steelkilt: (off stage) Where are you bound? And for what are you bound? No lies!
Captain: I am bound for Tahiti for more men.
Steelkilt: (off stage)Very good. Let me board you a moment – I come in peace.
(Steelkilt climbs aboard whale boat from the back side of stage. He stands face to face with the Captain.)
Steelkilt: Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head.
(Captain does as he is told.)
Steelkilt: Now repeat after me.
As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightenings strike me!
Captain: (Laughs. Has arms crossed and head tilted back.) I will not swear, or forswear, or make oaths. But because I know what is hidden in plain sight in the Holy Evangelists, I will only answer yea or nay.Yea, as soon as you leave me, I will beach this boat on yonder island, and remain there six days. And yea I know there is no forgiveness, that I will be stricken by lightening, or Moby Dick, himself if I sin or blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.
Steelkilt: (laughing joyously) A pretty scholar.Adios, Senor!
(He goes over the side, as the lights go out on whale-boat. Goes on piazza.)
Jonah: Watching the boat till it was fairly beached and drawn up to the roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time arrived in Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were providentially in want of precisely that number of men which the sailor headed. They embarked; and so for ever got the start of their former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal retribution.
Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all right there, again resumed his cruisings.
Where Steelkilt now is, none know; but upon the island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses to give up its dead; still in dreams see the awful white whale that destroyed him.
Act V, Scene 1
(The Piazza of the Golden Inn)
Don Sebastian: (quietly) Are you through?
Jonah: I am.
Don Sebastian: Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions, this your story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful! Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press.
Duena Maria: Also bear with all of us; for we all join in Don Sebastian's suit.
Jonah: Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn?
Don Sebastian: Nay, but I know a worthy priest nearby, who will quickly procure one for me. I go for it. But are you well advised? This may grow too serious.
Jonah: Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?
Another Don: (to other Don) Though there are no Auto-da-Fes in Lima now, I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no need for this.
(Jonah runs after Don Sebastian)
Jonah: Excuse me for running after you; but may I also beg that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists you can.
(lights fade)
Scene 2
(The Golden Inn as seen in Act 1, Scene 1. There is a flurry of activity. The Ahkolonas are setting up an Ayahuasca altar. Jonah watches activity with interest. Duena Maria and Duena Caharina mix materials, while singing incantation song. At the end of the song they have a large bottle full of a foamy, chocolate colored thick liquid.After the song all gather around the altar. )
Duena Maria: (to Jonah) This is a great medicine. A gift of grace from a mortal who conquered death and became immortal. God gives true instruction, he gives Immortal Truth, true revelation in the song that Ayahuasca sings.
(Duena Maria and the goddesses sing a joyous Ayahuasca song. She pours individual doses of Ayahuasca and offers the krater to everyone in the circle around the altar. All drink from the krater. Jonah drinks deeply from the krater.)
Jonah: (Ecstatically) Awe moves in my soul!
The terrible fatality.
Fatality.
Doom.
Doom!
Something whispers it.
(whisperingly) Doom!
Doom of what?
Doom of our white day.
We are doomed,
Doomed!
And the doom is in America.
(pauses)
Jonah: Ah, well, if my day is doomed, and I am doomed with my day, it is something greater than I which dooms me.
So I accept my doom as a sign of the greatness which is more than I am.
(pauses)
Jonah: I am not bound to any haven ahead.
But rushing from all havens astern.
(pauses then shouts)
Jonah: Moby Dick!
Who is He!
You want to know, who?
What is Moby Dick?
(pauses)
Jonah:(softly, whisperingly) He is the last ghastly hunt.
He is the deepest blood being of the white race,
Our deepest blood nature.
And he is hunted,
hunted, by the maniacal fanaticism of our rational,
scientific,
desperately common-sensible consciousness.
We must hunt him down.To subject him to our will.We enlist all races in this maniacal hunt of our-selves.
Dark races and pale,red, yellow, and black, east and west, Quaker and fire-worshipper
in this hunt which is our doom and our suicide.
Hot blooded sea-born Moby Dick.Hunted by monomaniacs of the rational, scientific, material idea.
(pauses)
Jonah: (loud, shouting)But He will not be destroyed! Will go where he will go!
Oh God!
Oh God!
What next, when the 'Pequod' has sunk.
She sank in the war, and we are all flotsam.
Now what next.Who knows?
Quien sabe?
(softly)Quien sabe?
(shouting) The 'Pequod' went down. And the 'Pequod' was the ship of the white American soul. She sank, taking with her blackman and Indian and Polynesian,
Asiatic and Quaker
and good common-sensible,business-like Yankees
and Ishmael.
And the master of this fallen world is judged, condemned,And overthrown!
(Don Sebastian returns with savage Ayahuasca priest/shaman, with hugh Bible.)
Don Sebastian: This is the priest. He is a Holy Evangelist. He brings you the biggest book of the Holy Evangelists in all of Lima. He brings you what is hidden in plain sight in the Holy Evangelists.
Jonah: (collecting himself, pausing) Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.
Because I know what is hidden in plain sight in the book of the Holy Evangelists I will not swear but will say Yea. Such things may seem incredible;
but, however wondorous, they are true.
(Lights fade.)
