20 
MOBY DICK; OR 
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 pedlar 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 dreadnought, which he had previously hung on a chair, he 
fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little de- 
formed 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 pre- 
served in some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all 
limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I con- 
cluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it 
proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fireplace, and 
removing the papered fireboard, sets up this little hunchbacked image, 
like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the 
bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fireplace 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 
