.. < chapter iii 14  THE SPOUTER-INN >


     Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn,

you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned

wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft.  On one

side hung a very large oil-painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way

defaced, that in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was

only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful

inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding

of its purpose.  such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at

first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New

England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched.  But by dint of

much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by

throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last

come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be

altogether unwarranted.  But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long,

limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the

.. <p 11 >

centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a

nameless yeast.  A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a

nervous man distracted.  Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained,

unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you

involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous

painting meant.  Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart

you through. --It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale. --It's the unnatural

combat of the four primal elements. --It's a blasted heath. --It's a Hyperborean

winter scene. --It's the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream of Time.  But at

last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the

picture's midst.  That once found out, and all the rest were plain.  But stop;

does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish?  even the great

leviathan himself?  In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory

of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons

with whom I conversed upon the subject.  The picture represents a Cape-Horner

in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three

dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring

clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the

three mast-heads.  The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a

heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears.  Some were thickly set with

glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of

human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like

the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower.  You shuddered

as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have

gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement.  Mixed with

these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed.

Some were storied weapons.  With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed,

fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a

sunset.  And that harpoon--so like a corkscrew now--was flung in Javan seas,

and run away with by a whale, years afterward slain off the Cape of Blanco.

The original iron entered

.. <p 12 >

nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man,

travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump.

Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way --cut through

what in old times must have been a great central chimney with fire-places all

round --you enter the public room.  A still duskier place is this, with such

low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you

would almost fancy you trod some old craft's cockpits, especially of such a

howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously.  On one

side stood a long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases,

filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks.

Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den --the

bar-- a rude attempt at a right whale's head.  Be that how it may, there

stands the vast arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might

almost drive beneath it.  within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old

decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like

another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a

little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors

deliriums and death.  Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his

poison.  Though true cylinders without --within, the villanous green goggling

glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom.  Parallel

meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets.

Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a penny more;

and so on to the full glass --the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down

for a shilling.  Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen

gathered about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of

skrimshander.  I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be

accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full --not a

bed unoccupied.  But avast, he added, tapping his forehead, you haint no

objections to sharing a harpooneer's blanket, have ye?  I s'pose you are goin'

a whalin', so you'd better get used to that sort of thing.

.. <p 13 >

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do

so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he (the

landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not

decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander further about a strange town

on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man's

blanket.  I thought so.  All right; take a seat.  Supper? --you want supper?

Supper 'll be ready directly.  I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all

over like a bench on the Battery.  At one end a ruminating tar was still

further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working

away at the space between his legs.  he was trying his hand at a ship under

full sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought.  At last some four or

five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room.  It was cold as

Iceland --no fire at all  --the landlord said he couldn't afford it.  Nothing

but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet.  We were fain to

button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with

our half frozen fingers.  But the fare was of the most substantial kind --not

only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens!  dumplings for supper!

One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in

a most direful manner.  My boy, said the landlord, you'll have the

nightmare to a dead sartainty.  Landlord, I whispered, that aint the

harpooneer, is it?  Oh, no, said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny,

the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap.  He never eats dumplings, he

don't--he eats nothing but steaks, and likes 'em rare.  The devil he does,

says I. Where is that harpooneer?  Is he here?  He'll be here afore long,

was the answer.  I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this

dark complexioned harpooneer.  At any rate, I made up my mind that if it

so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed

before I did.

.. <p 14 >

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what

else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a

looker on.  Presently a rioting noise was heard without.  Starting up, the

landlord cried, That's the Grampus's crew.  I seed her reported in the

offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship.  Hurrah, boys;

now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees.  A tramping of sea boots was

heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of

mariners enough.  Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with their

heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their

beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador.

They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they

entered.  No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's

mouth --the bar --when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon

poured them out brimmers all round.  One complained of a bad cold in his head,

upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which

he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never

mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or

on the weather side of an ice-island.  The liquor soon mounted into their

heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from

sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously.  I observed, however,

that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to

spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole

he refrained from making as much noise as the rest.  This man interested me

at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my

shipmate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is

concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him.  He stood

full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a

coffer-dam.  I have seldom seen such brawn in a man.  His face was deeply

brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in

the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to

give him much joy.  His voice at once announced

.. <p 15 >

that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be

one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleganian Ridge in Virginia.  When

the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped

away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the

sea.  In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being,

it seems, for some reason a huge favorite with them, they raised a cry of

Bulkington!  Bulkington!  where's Bulkington?  and darted out of the house in

pursuit of him.  It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost

supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon

a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the

seamen.  No man prefers to sleep two in a bed.  In fact, you would a good deal

rather not sleep with your own brother.  I don't know how it is, but people

like to be private when they are sleeping.  And when it comes to sleeping with

an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger

a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply.  Nor was there any

earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody

else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do

ashore.  To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have

your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your

own skin.  The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated

the thought of sleeping with him.  It was fair to presume that being a

harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the

tidiest, certainly none of the finest.  I began to twitch all over.  Besides,

it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going

bedwards.  Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight --how could I

tell from what vile hole he had been coming?  Landlord!  I've changed my mind

about that harpooneer. -- I shan't sleep with him.  I'll try the bench here.

just as you please; i'm sorry i cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress,

and it's a plaguy rough board here --feeling of the knots and notches.  But

wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've

.. <p 16 >

got a carpenter's plane there in the bar --wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug

enough.  So saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief

first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while

grinning like an ape.  The shavings flew right and left; till at last the

plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot.  The landlord was near

spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit -- the bed was

soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world

could make eider down of a pine plank.  So gathering up the shavings with

another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the

room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study.  I now took

the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too short; but that

could be mended with a chair.  But it was a foot too narrow, and the other

bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one --so there

was no yoking them.  I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the only

clear space against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my back

to settle down in.  But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold

air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do

at all, especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from

the window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the

immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night.  The

devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I steal a march on

him --bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the

most violent knockings?  it seemed no bad idea; but upon second thoughts I

dismissed it.  For who could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I

popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all

ready to knock me down!  Still, looking around me again, and seeing no possible

chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I

began to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices

against this unknown harpooneer.  Thinks I, I'll wait awhile; he must be

dropping in before long.  I'll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we

may become jolly good bedfellows after all --there's no telling.

.. <p 17 >

But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes, and

going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.  Landlord!  said I, what sort of

a chap is he --does he always keep such late hours?  It was now hard upon

twelve o'clock.  The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and

seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension.  No, he

answered, generally he's an early bird -- airley to bed and airley to rise

--yes, he's the bird what catches the worm. --But to-night he went out a

peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late, unless,

may be, he can't sell his head.  Can't sell his head? --What sort of a

bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?  getting into a towering rage.


     Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged

this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head

around this town?  That's precisely it, said the landlord, and I told him

he couldn't sell it here, the market's overstocked.  With what?  shouted I.


     With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?  I tell

you what it is, landlord, said I, quite calmly, you'd better stop spinning

that yarn to me --I'm not green.  May be not, taking out a stick and

whittling a toothpick, but I rayther guess you'll be done brown if that ere

harpooneer hears you a slanderin' his head.  I'll break it for him, said I,

now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the

landlord's.  It's broke a'ready, said he.  Broke, said I -- broke, do you

mean?  Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess.


     Landlord, said I, going up to him as cool as Mt.  Hecla in a snow storm,

-- landlord, stop whittling.  You and I must understand one another, and

that too without delay.  I come to your house and want a bed; you tell me you

can only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain

harpooneer.  And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you

persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories, tending

to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom

.. <p 18 >

you design for my bedfellow --a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an

intimate and confidential one in the highest degree.  I now demand of you to

speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be

in all respects safe to spend the night with him.  And in the first place,

you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if

true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've

no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you,

sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself

liable to a criminal prosecution.  Wall, said the landlord, fetching a long

breath, that's a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and

then.  But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of

has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New

Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one,

and that one he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it

would not do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin'

to churches.  He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was

goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth

like a string of inions.  This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable

mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling

me --but at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out a

Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal

business as selling the heads of dead idolators?  Depend upon it, landlord,

that harpooneer is a dangerous man.  He pays reg'lar, was the rejoinder.


     But come, it's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes --it's

a nice bed: Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced.

There's plenty room for two to kick about in that bed; it's an almighty big

bed that.  Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little

Johnny in the foot of it.  But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night,

and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm.

After

.. <p 19 >

that, Sal said it wouldn't do.  Come along here, I'll give ye a glim in a

jiffy; and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards me, offering to

lead the way.  But I stood irresolute; when looking at a clock in the corner,

he exclaimed I vum it's Sunday --you won't see that harpooneer to-night; he's

come to anchor somewhere --come along then; do come; won't ye come?  I

considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was

ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a

prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep

abreast.  There, said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea

chest that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; there, make

yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye.  I turned round from eyeing

the bed, but he had disappeared.  Folding back the counterpane, I stooped

over the bed.  Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny

tolerably well.  I then glanced round the room; and besides the bedstead and

centre table, could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a

rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man

striking a whale.  Of things not properly belonging to the room, there was a

hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner; also a large

seaman's bag, containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a

land trunk.  Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the

shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the

bed.  But what is this on the chest?  I took it up, and held it close to the

light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at

some satisfactory conclusion concerning it.  I can compare it to nothing but a

large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something

like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin.  There was a hole

or slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American

ponchos.  But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into

a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of

guise?  I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being

uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this

.. <p 20 >

mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day.  I went up in it to

a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my

life.  I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in

the neck.  I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about

this head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat.  After thinking some time on

the bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in the

middle of the room thinking.  I then took off my coat, and thought a little

more in my shirt sleeves.  But beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed

as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about the harpooneer's not

coming home at all that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado,

but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light

tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care of heaven.  Whether that

mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery, there is no telling,

but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time.  At

last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a good offing

towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and

saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door.  Lord save me,

thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler.  But I lay

perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word till spoken to.  Holding a

light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other, the

stranger entered the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his

candle a good way off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began

working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being

in the room.  I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for

some time while employed in unlacing the bag's mouth.  This accomplished,

however, he turned round --when, good heavens!  what a sight!  Such a face!  It

was of a dark purplish, yellow color, here and there stuck over with large,

blackish looking squares.  Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a terrible

bedfellow; he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just

from the surgeon.  But at that moment he chanced to turn his face so towards

the light, that I plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all,

.. <p 21 >

those black squares on his cheeks.  they were stains of some sort or other.  At

first I knew not what to make of this; but soon an inkling of the truth

occurred to me.  I remembered a story of a white man --a whaleman too--who,

falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them.  I concluded that this

harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages, must have met with a

similar adventure.  And what is it, thought I, after all!  It's only his

outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.  But then, what to make of

his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and

completely independent of the squares of tattooing.  To be sure, it might be

nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun's

tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one.  However, I had never been

in the South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary

effects upon the skin.  Now, while all these ideas were passing through me

like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at all.  But, after some

difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently

pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on.

Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the

New Zealand head --a ghastly thing enough --and crammed it down into the bag.

He now took off his hat --a new beaver hat --when I came nigh singing out with

fresh surprise.  There was no hair on his head --none to speak of at least --

nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead.  His bald purplish

head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull.  Had not the stranger

stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever

I bolted a dinner.  Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the

window, but it was the second floor back.  I am no coward, but what to make

of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.

Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and

confounded about the stranger, i confess i was now as much afraid of him as if

it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of

night.  In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then

to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed

inexplicable in him.

.. <p 22 >

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his

chest and arms.  As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with

the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark

squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just escaped from

it with a sticking-plaster shirt.  Still more, his very legs were marked, as

if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms.  It

was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped

aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian

country.  I quaked to think of it.  A peddler of heads too --perhaps the heads

of his own brothers.  He might take a fancy to mine --heavens!  look at that

tomahawk!  But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about

something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he

must indeed be a heathen.  Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or

dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the

pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch

on its back, and exactly the color of a three days' old Congo baby.

Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black

manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner.  But seeing that it

was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony,

I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it

proved to be.  For now the savage goes up to the empty fireplace, and removing

the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunchbacked image, like a tenpin,

between the andirons.  the chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very

sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine

or chapel for his Congo idol.  I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half

hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime --to see what was next to

follow.  First he takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego

pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship

biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings

into a sacrificial blaze.  Presently, after many hasty snatches into the

fire, and still hastier

.. <p 23 >

withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly),

he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat

and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro.  But the

little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never

moved his lips.  All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger

guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or

else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched

about in the most unnatural manner.  At last extinguishing the fire, he took

the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket

as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.  All these

queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now

exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping

into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light

was put out, to break the spell into which I had so long been bound.  But the

interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.  Taking up his

tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then

holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great

clouds of tobacco smoke.  The next moment the light was extinguished, and

this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me.  I

sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment

he began feeling me.  Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away

from him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might

be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again.  But his

guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my

meaning.  Who-e debel you? --he at last said -- you no speak-e, dam-me, I

kill-e.  And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the

dark.  Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!  shouted I.  Landlord!

Watch!  Coffin!  Angels!  save me!  Speak-e!  tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me,

I kill-e!  again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the

tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought

.. <p 24 >

my linen would get on fire.  But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord

came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.


     Don't be afraid now, said he, grinning again.  Queequeg here wouldn't harm

a hair of your head.  Stop your grinning, shouted I, and why didn't you

tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?  I thought ye know'd

it; --didn't I tell ye, he was peddlin' heads around town? --but turn flukes

again and go to sleep.  Queequeg, look here --you sabbee me, I sabbee you --this

man sleepe you --you sabbee?  Me sabbee plenty --grunted Queequeg, puffing

away at his pipe and sitting up in bed.  You gettee in, he added, motioning

to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side.  He really did

this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way.  I stood

looking at him a moment.  For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean,

comely looking cannibal.  What's all this fuss I have been making about,

thought i to myself --the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as

much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him.  Better sleep with a

sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.  Landlord, said I, tell him to

stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to

stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him.  But I don't fancy having

a man smoking in bed with me.  It's dangerous.  Besides, I aint insured.

This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned

me to get into bed --rolling over to one side as much as to say --I wont touch a

leg of ye.  Good night, landlord, said I, you may go.  I turned in, and

never slept better in my life.

.. <p 25 >

