Chapter Chapter 3 · 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

oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the

unequal crosslights 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 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 icebound 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 afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The

original iron entered 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

fireplaces 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.”

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 he 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.

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 that he was a

Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of

those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian 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 favourite 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 can’t 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 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 round 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.

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 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 of 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 of 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.

Arter 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 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 colour, 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, 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.

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 colour 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 fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board,

sets up this little hunch-backed 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 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 in 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 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 a 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 ain’t 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 won’t touch a leg of ye.”

“Good night, landlord,” said I, “you may go.”

I turned in, and never slept better in my life.