Moby Dick

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 favorite with them,
they raised a cry of "Bulkington!  Bulkington! where's Bulkington?"
and darted out of the house in pursuit of him.

It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost
supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate
myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous
to the entrance of the seamen.

No man prefers to sleep two in a bed.  In fact, you would
a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother.  I don't know
how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping.
And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger,
in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger
a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply.
Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep
two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more
sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore.
To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you
have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket,
and sleep in your own skin.

The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated
the thought of sleeping with him.  It was fair to presume that
being a harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be,
would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest.
I began to twitch all over.  Besides, it was getting late,
and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards.
Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight--
how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?

"Landlord!  I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.--