Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

  Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourselfin a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots,reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft.On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked,and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by whichyou viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series ofsystematic 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 atfirst you almost thought some ambitious young artist,in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineatechaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation,and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing openthe little window towards the back of the entry, you at lastcome 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 overthree blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast.A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drivea nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite,half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly frozeyou to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourselfto find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anona bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.--It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.--It's the unnaturalcombat of the four primal elements.--It's a blasted heath.--It's a Hyperborean winter scene.--It's the breaking-up ofthe icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fanciesyielded 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? eventhe 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 personswith whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture representsa Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered shipweltering 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 arrayof monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glitteringteeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair;and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping roundlike the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower.You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibaland savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking,horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lancesand harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons.With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago didNathan 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 Capeof Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restlessneedle 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 centralchimney with fireplaces all round--you enter the public room.A still duskier place is this, with such low ponderousbeams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that youwould almost fancy you trod some old craft's cockpits,especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchoredold ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low,shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled withdusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks.Projecting from the further angle of the room stands adark-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 thewhale'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 calledhim), 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 gogglingglasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom.Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surroundthese footpads' goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge isbut 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 abouta table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander.I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodatedwith 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 thatsort of thing."

  I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if Ishould 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 ratherthan 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 abench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was stillfurther adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping overand diligently working away at the space between his legs.He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn'tmake much headway, I thought.

  At last some four or five of us were summoned to ourmeal 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 ourlips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers.But the fare was of the most substantial kind--not only meatand potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper!One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himselfto these dumplings in a most direful manner.

  "My boy," said the landlord, "you'll have the nightmareto a dead sartainty."

  "Landlord," I whispered, "that aint the harpooneer is it?"

  "Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, "the harpooneeris 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 mymind 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 spendthe 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 reportedin 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 shaggywatch 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 justlanded 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 badcold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potionof gin and molasses, which he swor
e was a sovereign cure for allcolds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing,or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather sideof an ice-island.

  The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generallydoes 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 hisshipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained frommaking 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 isconcerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him.He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chestlike a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man.His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teethdazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyesfloated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy.His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from hisfine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineersfrom the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of hiscompanions 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 almostsupernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulatemyself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previousto the entrance of the seamen.

  No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you woulda good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't knowhow 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 strangera harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply.Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleeptwo in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no moresleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore.To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but youhave 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 abominatedthe thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume thatbeing 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 fora mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here"--feeling of the knotsand notches. "But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter'splane 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 handkerchieffirst 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'ssake to quit--the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not knowhow 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 intothe 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 wasa foot too short; but that could be mended with a chair.But it was a foot too narrow, and the other bench inthe room was about four inches higher than the planed one--so there was no yoking them. I then placed the first benchlengthwise 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 airover me from under the sill of the window, that this plan wouldnever do at all, especially as another current from the ricketydoor met the one from the window, and both together formeda series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the spotwhere 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 jumpinto 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 poppedout 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 chanceof spending a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed,I began to think that after all I might be cherishingunwarrantable 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 becomejolly 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 alwayskeep such late hours?" It was now hard upon twelve o'clock.

  The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemedto be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension."No," he answered, "generally he's an early bird--airley to bedand airley to rise--yea, he's the bird what catches the worm.But to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don't seewhat on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can'tsell his head."

  "Can't sell his head?--What sort of a bamboozingly storyis this you are telling me?" getting into a towering rage."Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actuallyengaged 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'tsell 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 harpooneerhears you a slanderin' his head."

  "I'll break it for him," said I, now flying into a passion againat 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 asnowstorm--"landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understandone another, and that too without delay. I come to your houseand 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 persistin telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories tendingto beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom youdesign for my bedfellow--a sort of connexion, landlord, which isan intimate and confidential one in the highest degree.I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what thisharpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safeto spend the night with him. And in the first place, you willbe so good as to unsay that story about selling his head,which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneeris stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping with a madman;and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induceme to do so knowingly would thereby render yourself liableto a criminal prosecution."

  "Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath, "that's apurty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then.But be easy, be easy, this h
ere harpooneer I have been tellin'you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought upa 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 sellto-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 allthe 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 stayedout of a Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in sucha 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 gettingdreadful 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.After that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here,I'll give ye a glim in a jiffy;" and so saying he lighteda 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 indeedfor any four harpooneers to sleep abreast.

  "There," said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy oldsea 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 scrutinytolerably well. I then glanced round the room; and besidesthe bedstead and centre table, could see no other furniturebelonging 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 ahammock 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 parcelof 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 closeto the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every waypossible 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 somethinglike the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin.There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat, as you seethe same in South American ponchos. But could it be possiblethat any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and paradethe 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 itof a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass stuckagainst 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 myselfa kink in the neck.

  I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinkingabout this head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat.After thinking some time on the bed-side, I got up and took off mymonkey 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'snot 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 commendedmyself to the care of heaven.

  Whether that mattress was stuffed with corncobs or broken crockery,there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and couldnot 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 glimmerof 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 lightin one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other,the stranger entered the room, and without looking towardsthe bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the floorin one corner, and then began working away at the knotted cordsof the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room.I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it avertedfor 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 turnhis face so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could notbe sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks.They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not whatto 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 hisdistant 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 ofhis 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 apurplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South Seas;and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effectsupon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passingthrough me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed meat all. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag,he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sortof 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 baldpurplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull.Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I wouldhave bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.

  Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out ofthe window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward,but what to make of this headpeddling purple rascal altogetherpassed 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 devilhimself 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 enoughjust then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answerconcerning what seemed inexplicable in him.

  Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and atlast showed his chest and arms. As I live, these coveredparts 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 justescaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt.Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of darkgreen frogs were running up the trunks of young palms.It was now quite plain that he mu
st be some abominable savageor 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 wentabout 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 hunchon its back, and exactly the color of a three days' old Congo baby.Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that thisblack manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner.But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glisteneda good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it mustbe 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 littlehunch-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 littleshrine 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 shipbiscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindledthe shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hastysnatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers(whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeededin drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashesa 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 accompaniedby still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to bepraying 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 werea sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.

  All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness,and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concludinghis business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thoughtit 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 itfor an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouthat 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 astonishmenthe began feeling me.

  Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from himagainst 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 illcomprehended 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!" shoutedI. "Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!"

  "Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growledthe cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scatteredthe hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire.But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room lightin hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.

  "Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here wouldn'tharm a hair of your head."

  "Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell methat that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?"

  "I thought ye know'd it;--didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin'heads around town?--but turn flukes again and go to sleep.Queequeg, look here--you sabbee me, I sabbee--you this mansleepe you--you sabbee?"

  "Me sabbee plenty"--grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipeand 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 thisin not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way.I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooingshe was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal.What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought Ito myself--the man's a human being just as I am: he has justas 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 willturn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me.It's dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured."

  This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politelymotioned me to get into bed--rolling over to one side as much as to say--I won't touch a leg of ye."

  "Good night, landlord," said I, "you may go."

  I turned in, and never slept better in my life.