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 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 woolen, 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 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- 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 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. 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 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 a 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 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

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.