Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/H.Melville/moby.2

Text File | 1994-05-27 | 7.9 KB | 116 lines

.. < chapter ii 24  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 on 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
.. <p 7 >
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 cobble-stones --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 I 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 gloom 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
.. <p 8 >
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 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 a 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
.. <p 9 >
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 judging
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
.. <p 10 >
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.
.. <p 10 >