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Table of Contents
Chapter 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 on 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 ..
2 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 monopolizing 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
cobble-stones --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 ..
3 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 ..
4 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 ..
5 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. ..
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