CHAPTER 2

  The Carpet-Bag

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

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

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

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

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

reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday.

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

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

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

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

there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with

that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New

Bedford has of late been gradually monopolizing the business of

whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much

behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original- the Tyre of this

Carthage;- the place where the first dead American whale was stranded.

Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the

Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan? And

where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop

put forth, partly laden with imported cobblestones- so goes the story-

to throw at the whales, in order to discover when they were nigh

enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?

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

before me in New Bedford, ere could embark for my destined port, it

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

It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night,

bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With

anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few

pieces of silver,- So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself,

as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and

comparing the towards the north with the darkness towards the south-

wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my

dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don't be too

particular.

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

"The Crossed Harpoons"- but it looked too expensive and jolly there.

Further on, from the bright red windows of the "Sword-Fish Inn," there

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

snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the

congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,-

rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty

projections, because from hard, remorseless service the soles of my

boots were in a most miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly,

again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the

street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go on,

Ishmael, said I at last; don't you hear? get away from before the

door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now

by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there,

doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.

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

hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a

tomb. At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that

quarter of the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a

smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which

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

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

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

particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed

city, Gomorrah? But "The Crossed Harpoons," and the "The Sword-Fish?"-

this, then must needs be the sign of "The Trap." However, I picked

myself up and hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a

second, interior door.

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

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

Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church;

and the preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the

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

backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of 'The Trap!'

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

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

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

representing tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words

underneath- "The Spouter Inn:- Peter Coffin."

  Coffin?- Spouter?- Rather ominous in that particular connexion,

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

suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked

so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the

dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been

carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging

sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here

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

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

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

bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse

howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon,

nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with

his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. "In of that

tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer- of whose

works I possess the only copy extant- "it maketh a marvellous

difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where

the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from

that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which

the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough, thought I, as

this passage occurred to my mind- old black-letter, thou reasonest

well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house.

What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though,

and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late to

make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone

is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus

there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow,

and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both

ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that

would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old

Dives, in his red silken wrapper- (he had a redder one afterwards)

pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what

northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of

everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own

summer with my own coals.

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

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

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

along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery

pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?

  Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone

before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an

iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he

too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being

a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of

orphans.

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

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

frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this "Spouter" may be.