Moby Dick by Herman Melville (read this if txt) đ
- Author: Herman Melville
- Performer: 0142437247
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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 oneâ 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, couldnât I steal a march on himâbolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea but upon second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down!
Still looking around me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other personâs bed, I began to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, Iâll wait awhile; he must be dropping in before long. Iâll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after allâthereâs 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.
âLandlord! said I, âwhat sort of a chap is heâdoes he always keep such late hours?â It was now hard upon twelve oâclock.
The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. âNo,â he answered, âgenerally heâs an early birdâairley to bed and airley to riseâyea, heâs the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I donât see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he canât sell his head.â
âCanât sell his head?âWhat sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?â getting into a towering rage. âDo 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?â
âThatâs precisely it,â said the landlord, âand I told him he couldnât sell it here, the marketâs overstocked.â
âWith what?â shouted I.
âWith heads to be sure; ainât there too many heads in the world?â
âI tell you what it is, landlord,â said I quite calmly, âyouâd better stop spinning that yarn to meâIâm not green.â
âMay be not,â taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, âbut I rayther guess youâll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderinâ his head.â
âIâll break it for him,â said I, now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlordâs.
âItâs broke aâready,â said he.
âBroke,â said Iââbroke, do you mean?â
âSartain, and thatâs the very reason he canât sell it, I guess.â
âLandlord,â said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snowstormââlandlord, 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 bedfellowâa 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 Iâve 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.â
âWall,â said the landlord, fetching a long breath, âthatâs 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 tellinâ you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of âbalmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and heâs sold all on âem but one, and that one heâs trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrowâs Sunday, and it would not do to be sellinâ human heads about the streets when folks is goinâ to churches. He wanted to last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goinâ out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions.â
This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling meâ 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?
âDepend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man.â
âHe pays regâlar,â was the rejoinder. âBut come, itâs getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukesâitâs a nice bed: Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. Thereâs plenty of room for two to kick about in that bed; itâs 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 wouldnât do. Come along here, Iâll give ye a glim in a jiffy;â 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 âI vum itâs Sundayâyou wonât see that harpooneer to-night; heâs come to anchor somewhereâcome along then; do come; wonât ye come?â
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.
âThere,â said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; âthere, make yourself comfortable now; and good night to ye.â 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 seamanâs bag, containing the harpooneerâs 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 harpooneerâs not coming home at all that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care of heaven.
Whether that mattress was stuffed with corncobs or broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door.
Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the floor
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