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.. < chapter iii 14  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 cross-lights 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
.. <p 11 >
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 ice-bound 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 afterward slain off the Cape of Blanco.
The original iron entered
.. <p 12 >
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 fire-places 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.
.. <p 13 >
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 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.
.. <p 14 >
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
.. <p 15 >
that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be
one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleganian 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
.. <p 16 >
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.
.. <p 17 >
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
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 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
.. <p 18 >
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 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 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
.. <p 19 >
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
.. <p 20 >
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.  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,
.. <p 21 >
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 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.
.. <p 22 >
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 fireplace, and removing
the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunchbacked 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
.. <p 23 >
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 into 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
.. <p 24 >
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 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 aint 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 wont touch a
leg of ye.  Good night, landlord, said I, you may go.  I turned in, and
never slept better in my life.
.. <p 25 >