THE WHITE WHALE 
21 
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 he 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 wood- 
cock. 
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 mo- 
ment 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 com- 
prehended 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 !” 
“Speake-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 
