19 
THE WHITE WHALE 
his cheeks. They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew 
not what to make of this ; hut 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 extraor- 
dinary effects upon the skin. How, 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 fum- 
bling 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 Hew 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 comprehen- 
sion. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely non- 
plussed 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 
