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 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 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 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.
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—
yea, 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 snowstorm
—”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. After 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 corncobs 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, 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
headpeddling 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 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 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.
