|
Table of Contents
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 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 ..
2 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 ..
3 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. ..
4 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. ..
5 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 ..
6 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 ..
7 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. ..
8 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
..
9 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 ..
10 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 ..
11 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, ..
12 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. ..
13 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 ..
14 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 ..
15 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. ..
|
