Chương Chương 2 · The Carpet-Bag.

I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my

arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city

of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night

in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little

packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching

that place would offer, till the following Monday.

As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at

this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well

be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was

made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a

fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous

old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has

of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though

in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket

was her great original—the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the

first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket

did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes

to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did

that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with

imported cobblestones—so goes the story—to throw at the whales, in

order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the

bowsprit?

Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me

in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a

matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a

very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold

and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had

sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So,

wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of

a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the

north with the darkness towards the south—wherever in your wisdom you

may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to

inquire the price, and don’t be too particular.

With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of “The

Crossed Harpoons”—but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further

on, from the bright red windows of the “Sword-Fish Inn,” there came

such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and

ice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay

ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,—rather weary for me,

when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from

hard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most

miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one

moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of

the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don’t

you hear? get away from before the door; your patched boots are

stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets

that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not

the cheeriest inns.

Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand,

and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At

this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of

the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light

proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood

invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the

uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble

over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying

particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city,

Gomorrah? But “The Crossed Harpoons,” and “The Sword-Fish?”—this, then

must needs be the sign of “The Trap.” However, I picked myself up and

hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior

door.

It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black

faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of

Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the

preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping

and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing

out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of ‘The Trap!’

Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the

docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a

swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly

representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words

underneath—“The Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin.”

Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought

I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this

Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and

the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated

little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here

from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a

poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very

spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.

It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied

as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner,

where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than

ever it did about poor Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless,

is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the

hob quietly toasting for bed. “In judging of that tempestuous wind

called Euroclydon,” says an old writer—of whose works I possess the

only copy extant—“it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou

lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the

outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where

the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only

glazier.” True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my

mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are

windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn’t

stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint

here and there. But it’s too late to make any improvements now. The

universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted

off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth

against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with

his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a

corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the

tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken

wrapper—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty

night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their

oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the

privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.

But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up

to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra

than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the

line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in

order to keep out this frost?

Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the

door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be

moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a

Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a

temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.

But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there

is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted

feet, and see what sort of a place this “Spouter” may be.