---
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title: CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
boolean: true
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text: >-
  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.
number: '111111'
markdown: >-
  ![](/assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg)


  # 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.](https://netlifycms.org)


  ![moby dick](/assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg)


  {{< youtube lZ6NEHDgk58 >}}


  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
  honourable 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 honour, 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.
datetime: 2017-06-07T18:55:28.110Z
date: 2017-06-07T18:55:28.111Z
image: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
file: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
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    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.
  number: '222222'
  markdown: >-
    # 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.](https://netlifycms.org)


    ![moby dick](/assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg)


    {{< youtube lZ6NEHDgk58 >}}


    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.
  datetime: 2017-06-07T19:05:43.816Z
  date: 2017-06-07T18:55:28.115Z
  image: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
  file: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
  select: b
  string: CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
list:
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      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.
    number: '333333'
    markdown: >-
      # 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 planned 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.

      “Who-e debel you?”—he at last said—“you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e.” And
      so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark.

      “Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I. “Landlord! Watch!
      Coffin! Angels! save me!”

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

      “Don’t be afraid now,” said he, grinning again, “Queequeg here wouldn’t
      harm a hair of your head.”

      “Stop your grinning,” shouted I, “and why didn’t you tell me that that
      infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?”

      “I thought ye know’d it;—didn’t I tell ye, he was a peddlin’ heads around
      town?—but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here—you
      sabbee me, I sabbee—you this man sleepe you—you sabbee?”

      “Me sabbee plenty”—grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting
      up in bed.

      “You gettee in,” he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing
      the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a
      really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all
      his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal.
      What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the
      man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me,
      as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a
      drunken Christian.

      “Landlord,” said I, “tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or
      whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn
      in with him. But I don’t fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It’s
      dangerous. Besides, I ain’t insured.”

      This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely
      motioned me to get into bed—rolling over to one side as much as to say—“I
      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.
    datetime: 2017-06-02T04:00:00.000Z
    date: 2017-06-07T04:00:00.000Z
    image: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
    file: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
    select: c
    object:
      boolean: true
      text: >-
        Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown
        over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost
        thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of
        odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his
        tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no
        two parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his
        keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt
        sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this same arm of his, I
        say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt.
        Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could
        hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and
        it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that
        Queequeg was hugging me.
      number: '444444'
      markdown: >-
        # Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown
        over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost
        thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of
        odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his
        tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no
        two parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his
        keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt
        sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this same arm of his, I
        say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt.
        Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could
        hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and
        it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that
        Queequeg was hugging me.


        ## My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a
        child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me;
        whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The
        circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other—I think
        it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a
        few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the
        time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,—my mother dragged me
        by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was
        only two o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in
        the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But there was no help for
        it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the third floor, undressed
        myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh
        got between the sheets.


        I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse
        before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the small
        of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun
        shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the
        streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse
        and worse—at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my
        stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at
        her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good
        slippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but condemning me to lie
        abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most
        conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For
        several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I
        have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At
        last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly
        waking from it—half steeped in dreams—I opened my eyes, and the before
        sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock
        running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to
        be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung
        over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or
        phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my
        bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with
        the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking
        that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be
        broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me;
        but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for
        days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding
        attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle
        myself with it.


        Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the
        supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to
        those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg’s pagan arm
        thrown round me. But at length all the past night’s events soberly
        recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to the
        comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm—unlock his
        bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as
        though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse
        him—“Queequeg!”—but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over, my
        neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a slight
        scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping
        by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty
        pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day,
        with a cannibal and a tomahawk! “Queequeg!—in the name of goodness,
        Queequeg, wake!” At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and
        incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow
        male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a
        grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over like
        a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a
        pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he did not
        altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim consciousness
        of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him. Meanwhile,
        I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings now, and bent
        upon narrowly observing so curious a creature. When, at last, his mind
        seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow, and he became,
        as it were, reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon the floor, and by
        certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me,
        he would dress first and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the
        whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances,
        this is a very civilized overture; but, the truth is, these savages have
        an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is marvellous how
        essentially polite they are. I pay this particular compliment to
        Queequeg, because he treated me with so much civility and consideration,
        while I was guilty of great rudeness; staring at him from the bed, and
        watching all his toilette motions; for the time my curiosity getting the
        better of my breeding. Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you don’t see
        every day, he and his ways were well worth unusual regarding.


        He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall one,
        by the by, and then—still minus his trowsers—he hunted up his boots.
        What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next
        movement was to crush himself—boots in hand, and hat on—under the bed;
        when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was
        hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I ever
        heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his boots.
        But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition stage—neither
        caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his
        outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His education was not
        yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not been a small
        degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled himself with
        boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage, he never
        would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. At last, he
        emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over his eyes,
        and began creaking and limping about the room, as if, not being much
        accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones—probably
        not made to order either—rather pinched and tormented him at the first
        go off of a bitter cold morning.


        Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the
        street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view into
        the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that
        Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on;
        I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and
        particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He
        complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the
        morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg, to my
        amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his
        chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a
        piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water
        and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept
        his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed corner,
        slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little
        on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall,
        begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks
        I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers’s best cutlery with a vengeance.
        Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came to know of
        what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp
        the long straight edges are always kept.


        The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of
        the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his
        harpoon like a marshal’s baton.
      datetime: 2017-06-07T19:05:43.820Z
      date: 2017-06-07T19:05:36.240Z
      image: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
      file: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
      select: b
      list:
        - post: Just a Test Post
          boolean: true
          text: Testing the Object Text
          number: 8
          markdown: Fun stuff
          datetime: 2019-03-22T04:20:38.545Z
          date: 2019-03-22T04:20:38.639Z
          image: /assets/uploads/avatar.png
          file: /assets/uploads/Photo 1-lobby_FS.jpg
          select: b
          hidden: 'test string hidden type'
          object:
            boolean: true
            text: 'Testing #2'
            number: 2341232
            markdown: |-
              Testing #2

              ![None](/assets/uploads/Photo 1-lobby_FS.jpg "Picture of a house")
            datetime: 2019-03-22T04:20:38.742Z
            date: 2019-03-22T04:20:38.839Z
            image: /assets/uploads/avatar.png
            file: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
            select: a
            string: 'Testing #2'
          string: Testing the Object String
      string: CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.
    string: CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.
typed_list:
  - boolean: true
    string: CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
    text: >-
      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.
    type: type_1_object
  - number: 3
    markdown: >-
      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam eget
      facilisis magna. Integer eget eleifend quam, sit amet sodales nisi. Fusce
      non lacus tempus, posuere tellus semper, facilisis lectus. Cras consequat
      aliquet ex.
    datetime: 2017-06-07T19:05:43.816Z
    select: b
    type: type_2_object
  - boolean: false
    string: CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
    text: >-
      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec elementum
      augue ornare lectus finibus mollis. Maecenas fringilla lorem at nisl
      pharetra scelerisque.
    type: type_1_object
  - date: 2017-06-07T18:55:28.111Z
    image: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
    file: /assets/uploads/moby-dick.jpg
    type: type_3_object
---
