Moby-Dick; or The Whale, by Herman Melville

Table of Content

ETYMOLOGY.

(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School.)

The pale Usher"threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him

now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer

handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the

known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it

somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

�While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what

name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through

ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the

signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true.�

"_Hackluyt._

�WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. _hval_. This animal is named from

roundness or rolling; for in Dan. _hvalt_ is arched or vaulted.�

"_Webster�s Dictionary._

�WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. _Wallen_;

A.S. _Walw-ian_, to roll, to wallow.� "_Richardson�s Dictionary._

�-ו, _Hebrew_.

ϰητος, _Greek_.

CETUS, _Latin_.

WH��L, _Anglo-Saxon_.

HVALT, _Danish_.

WAL, _Dutch_.

HWAL, _Swedish_.

WHALE, _Icelandic_.

WHALE, _English_.

BALLENA, _Spanish_.

PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, _Fegee_.

PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, _Erromangoan_.

EXTRACTS. (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).

It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of

a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long

Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random

allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever,

sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least,

take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in

these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As

touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here

appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as

affording a glancing bird�s eye view of what has been promiscuously

said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and

generations, including our own.

So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am.

Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this

world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too

rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel

poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them

bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether

unpleasant sadness"Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more

pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for

ever go thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the

Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the

royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before

are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of

long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming.

Here ye strike but splintered hearts together"there, ye shall strike

unsplinterable glasses!

EXTRACTS.

�And God created great whales.� "_Genesis_.

�Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep

to be hoary.� "_Job_.

�Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.�

"_Jonah_.

�There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to

play therein.� "_Psalms_.

�In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,

shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that

crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.�

"_Isaiah_.

�And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this

monster�s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all

incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the

bottomless gulf of his paunch.� "_Holland�s Plutarch�s Morals_.

�The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are:

among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as

much in length as four acres or arpens of land.� "_Holland�s Pliny_.

�Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a

great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the

former, one was of a most monstrous size.... This came towards us,

open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea

before him into a foam.� "_Tooke�s Lucian_. �_The True History_.�

�He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales,

which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he

brought some to the king.... The best whales were catched in his own

country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He

said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days.�

"_Other or Other�s verbal narrative taken down from his mouth by King

Alfred, A.D._ 890.

�And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that

enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster�s (whale�s) mouth, are

immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in

great security, and there sleeps.� "MONTAIGNE. "_Apology for Raimond

Sebond_.

�Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan

described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.�

"_Rabelais_.

�This whale�s liver was two cartloads.� "_Stowe�s Annals_.

�The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling

pan.� "_Lord Bacon�s Version of the Psalms_.

�Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received

nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible

quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale.� "_Ibid_.

�_History of Life and Death_.�

�The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise.�

"_King Henry_.

�Very like a whale.� "_Hamlet_.

�Which to secure, no skill of leach�s art Mote him availle, but to

returne againe To his wound�s worker, that with lowly dart, Dinting

his breast, had bred his restless paine, Like as the wounded whale to

shore flies thro� the maine.� "_The Fairie Queen_.

�Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful

calm trouble the ocean till it boil.� "_Sir William Davenant. Preface

to Gondibert_.

�What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned

Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, _Nescio quid

sit_.� "_Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale.

Vide his V. E._

�Like Spencer�s Talus with his modern flail He threatens ruin with

his ponderous tail. ... Their fixed jav�lins in his side he wears,

And on his back a grove of pikes appears.� "_Waller�s Battle of the

Summer Islands_.

�By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or

State"(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.� "_Opening

sentence of Hobbes�s Leviathan_.

�Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a

sprat in the mouth of a whale.� "_Pilgrim�s Progress_.

�That sea beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest

that swim the ocean stream.� "_Paradise Lost_.

"�There Leviathan, Hugest of living creatures, in the deep Stretched

like a promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land; and at

his gills Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.� "_Ibid_.

�The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of

oil swimming in them.� "_Fuller�s Profane and Holy State_.

�So close behind some promontory lie The huge Leviathan to attend

their prey, And give no chance, but swallow in the fry, Which through

their gaping jaws mistake the way.� "_Dryden�s Annus Mirabilis_.

�While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off

his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come;

but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water.� "_Thomas

Edge�s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchas_.

�In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in

wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which

nature has placed on their shoulders.� "_Sir T. Herbert�s Voyages

into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll_.

�Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to

proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their

ship upon them.� "_Schouten�s Sixth Circumnavigation_.

�We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The

Jonas-in-the-Whale.... Some say the whale can�t open his mouth, but

that is a fable.... They frequently climb up the masts to see whether

they can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his

pains.... I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a

barrel of herrings in his belly.... One of our harpooneers told me

that he caught once a whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over.�

"_A Voyage to Greenland, A.D._ 1671. _Harris Coll_.

�Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one

eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was

informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of

baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.�

"_Sibbald�s Fife and Kinross_.

�Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this

Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that

was killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness.�

"_Richard Strafford�s Letter from the Bermudas. Phil. Trans. A.D._

1668.

�Whales in the sea God�s voice obey.� "_N. E. Primer_.

�We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those

southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the

northward of us.� "_Captain Cowley�s Voyage round the Globe, A.D._

1729.

�... and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an

insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.�

"_Ulloa�s South America_.

�To fifty chosen sylphs of special note, We trust the important

charge, the petticoat. Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to

fail, Tho� stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.� "_Rape

of the Lock_.

�If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that

take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear

contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest

animal in creation.� "_Goldsmith, Nat. Hist_.

�If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them

speak like great whales.� "_Goldsmith to Johnson_.

�In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was

found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were

then towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves

behind the whale, in order to avoid being seen by us.� "_Cook�s

Voyages_.

�The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so

great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to

mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood,

and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order

to terrify and prevent their too near approach.� "_Uno Von Troil�s

Letters on Banks�s and Solander�s Voyage to Iceland in_ 1772.

�The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce

animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.�

"_Thomas Jefferson�s Whale Memorial to the French minister in_ 1778.

�And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?� "_Edmund Burke�s

reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery_.

�Spain"a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.� "_Edmund

Burke_. (_somewhere_.)

�A tenth branch of the king�s ordinary revenue, said to be grounded

on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from

pirates and robbers, is the right to _royal_ fish, which are whale

and sturgeon. And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the

coast, are the property of the king.� "_Blackstone_.

�Soon to the sport of death the crews repair: Rodmond unerring o�er

his head suspends The barbed steel, and every turn attends.�

"_Falconer�s Shipwreck_.

�Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires, And rockets blew self

driven, To hang their momentary fire Around the vault of heaven.

�So fire with water to compare, The ocean serves on high, Up-spouted

by a whale in air, To express unwieldy joy.� "_Cowper, on the Queen�s

Visit to London_.

�Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a

stroke, with immense velocity.� "_John Hunter�s account of the

dissection of a whale_. (_A small sized one_.)

�The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the

water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage

through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood

gushing from the whale�s heart.� "_Paley�s Theology_.

�The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.� "_Baron

Cuvier_.

�In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any

till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them.�

"_Colnett�s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale

Fishery_.

�In the free element beneath me swam, Floundered and dived, in play,

in chace, in battle, Fishes of every colour, form, and kind; Which

language cannot paint, and mariner Had never seen; from dread

Leviathan To insect millions peopling every wave: Gather�d in shoals

immense, like floating islands, Led by mysterious instincts through

that waste And trackless region, though on every side Assaulted by

voracious enemies, Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm�d in front or

jaw, With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.�

"_Montgomery�s World before the Flood_.

�Io! Paean! Io! sing. To the finny people�s king. Not a mightier

whale than this In the vast Atlantic is; Not a fatter fish than he,

Flounders round the Polar Sea.� "_Charles Lamb�s Triumph of the

Whale_.

�In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the

whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed:

there"pointing to the sea"is a green pasture where our children�s

grand-children will go for bread.� "_Obed Macy�s History of

Nantucket_.

�I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the

form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale�s jaw bones.�

"_Hawthorne�s Twice Told Tales_.

�She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been

killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years

ago.� "_Ibid_.

�No, Sir, �tis a Right Whale,� answered Tom; �I saw his sprout; he

threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to

look at. He�s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!� "_Cooper�s Pilot_.

�The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that

whales had been introduced on the stage there.� "_Eckermann�s

Conversations with Goethe_.

�My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?� I answered, �we have been

stove by a whale.� "�_Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship

Essex of Nantucket, which was attacked and finally destroyed by a

large Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean_.� _By Owen Chace of

Nantucket, first mate of said vessel. New York_, 1821.

�A mariner sat in the shrouds one night, The wind was piping free;

Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale, And the phospher

gleamed in the wake of the whale, As it floundered in the sea.�

"_Elizabeth Oakes Smith_.

�The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the capture

of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six

English miles....

�Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,

cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four

miles.� "_Scoresby_.

�Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the

infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous

head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he

rushes at the boats with his head; they are propelled before him with

vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed.... It is a matter of

great astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so

interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so important an

animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely neglected,

or should have excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and

many of them competent observers, that of late years, must have

possessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportunities of

witnessing their habitudes.� "_Thomas Beale�s History of the Sperm

Whale_, 1839.

�The Cachalot� (Sperm Whale) �is not only better armed than the True

Whale� (Greenland or Right Whale) �in possessing a formidable weapon

at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a

disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once

so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as

the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale

tribe.� "_Frederick Debell Bennett�s Whaling Voyage Round the Globe_,

1840.

October 13. �There she blows,� was sung out from the mast-head.

�Where away?� demanded the captain. �Three points off the lee bow,

sir.� �Raise up your wheel. Steady!� �Steady, sir.� �Mast-head

ahoy! Do you see that whale now?� �Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm

Whales! There she blows! There she breaches!� �Sing out! sing out

every time!� �Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there"there"_thar_ she

blows"bowes"bo-o-os!� �How far off?� �Two miles and a half.� �Thunder

and lightning! so near! Call all hands.� "_J. Ross Browne�s Etchings

of a Whaling Cruize_. 1846.

�The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid

transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of

Nantucket.� "�_Narrative of the Globe Mutiny_,� _by Lay and Hussey

survivors. A.D._ 1828.

Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the

assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length

rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved by

leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable.�

"_Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett_.

�Nantucket itself,� said Mr. Webster, �is a very striking and

peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a population of

eight or nine thousand persons living here in the sea, adding largely

every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering

industry.� "_Report of Daniel Webster�s Speech in the U. S. Senate,

on the application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket_.

1828.

�The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a

moment.� "�_The Whale and his Captors, or The Whaleman�s Adventures

and the Whale�s Biography, gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the

Commodore Preble_.� _By Rev. Henry T. Cheever_.

�If you make the least damn bit of noise,� replied Samuel, �I will

send you to hell.� "_Life of Samuel Comstock_ (_the mutineer_), _by

his brother, William Comstock. Another Version of the whale-ship

Globe narrative_.

�The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in

order, if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though

they failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of the whale.�

"_McCulloch�s Commercial Dictionary_.

�These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound

forward again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the

whalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same

mystic North-West Passage.� "_From_ �_Something_� _unpublished_.

�It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being

struck by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with

look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around

them, has a totally different air from those engaged in regular

voyage.� "_Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex_.

�Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect

having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to

form arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may

perhaps have been told that these were the ribs of whales.� "_Tales

of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean_.

�It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales,

that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages

enrolled among the crew.� "_Newspaper Account of the Taking and

Retaking of the Whale-Ship Hobomack_.

�It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels

(American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they

departed.� "_Cruise in a Whale Boat_.

�Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up

perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale.� "_Miriam Coffin or

the Whale Fisherman_.

�The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would

manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope

tied to the root of his tail.� "_A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and

Trucks_.

�On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male

and female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a

stone�s throw of the shore� (Terra Del Fuego), �over which the beech

tree extended its branches.� "_Darwin�s Voyage of a Naturalist_.

��Stern all!� exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw

the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the

boat, threatening it with instant destruction;"�Stern all, for your

lives!�� "_Wharton the Whale Killer_.

�So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, While the bold

harpooneer is striking the whale!� "_Nantucket Song_.

�Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale In his ocean home will be

A giant in might, where might is right, And King of the boundless

sea.� "_Whale Song_.

CHAPTER 1. Loomings.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago"never mind how long precisely"having

little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me

on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part

of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and

regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about

the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever

I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and

bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever

my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral

principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and

methodically knocking people�s hats off"then, I account it high time to

get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.

With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I

quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they

but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other,

cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by

wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs"commerce surrounds it with her

surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme

downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and

cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of

land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears

Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What

do you see?"Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand

thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some

leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some

looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the

rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these

are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster"tied to

counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are

the green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and

seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the

extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder

warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water

as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand"miles of

them"leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets

and avenues"north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell

me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all

those ships attract them thither?

Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take

almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a

dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in

it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest

reveries"stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will

infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.

Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this

experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical

professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for

ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,

quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley

of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his

trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were

within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up

from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands

winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in

their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and

though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this

shepherd�s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd�s eye were

fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June,

when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among

Tiger-lilies"what is the one charm wanting?"Water"there is not a drop

of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel

your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon

suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy

him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian

trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a

robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea?

Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a

mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out

of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did

the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely

all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that

story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild

image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that

same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image

of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin

to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my

lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a

passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a

purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers

get sea-sick"grow quarrelsome"don�t sleep of nights"do not enjoy

themselves much, as a general thing;"no, I never go as a passenger;

nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a

Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction

of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all

honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind

whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself,

without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.

And as for going as cook,"though I confess there is considerable glory

in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board"yet, somehow, I

never fancied broiling fowls;"though once broiled, judiciously

buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who

will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled

fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old

Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the

mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,

plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.

True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to

spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of

thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one�s sense of honor,

particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the

Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if

just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been

lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in

awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a

schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and

the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off

in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom

and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,

I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel

Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and

respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain�t

a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may

order me about"however they may thump and punch me about, I have the

satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is

one way or other served in much the same way"either in a physical or

metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is

passed round, and all hands should rub each other�s shoulder-blades,

and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of

paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single

penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must

pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and

being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable

infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But _being

paid_,"what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man

receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly

believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no

account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign

ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome

exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,

head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if

you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the

Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from

the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not

so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many

other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But

wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a

merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling

voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the

constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in

some unaccountable way"he can better answer than any one else. And,

doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand

programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in

as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive

performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run

something like this:

�_Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States._

�WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. �BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.�

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the

Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when

others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short

and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces"though I

cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the

circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives

which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced

me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the

delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill

and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale

himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my

curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island

bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all

the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds,

helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things

would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an

everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and

land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to

perceive a horror, and could still be social with it"would they let

me"since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of

the place one lodges in.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the

great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild

conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into

my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them

all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

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 monopolising 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 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 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 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 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.

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

oilpainting 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 favourite 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 can�t 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"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 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.

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 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 colour, 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

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.

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 colour 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.