/sci/ - Science & Math

>>7905721
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.

>>7905717
‘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

>>7905715
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!’

>>7905714
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

>>7905710
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.

>>7905707
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

>>7905705
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.

>>7905700
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

>>7905699
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.

>>7905696
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

>>7905695
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

>>7905691
‘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 tomorrow’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

>>7905688
‘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.’

>>7905687
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?’

>>7905685
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

>>7905684
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

>>7905679
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 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

>>7905676
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

>>7905675
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 seagods
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

>>7905674
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

>>7905672
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.

>>7905671
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’ awhalin’,
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

>>7905669
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

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enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mastheads.

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 lowarched
way—cut through what in old times must have