17 
THE WHITE WHALE 
loot 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 upstairs 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 washstand 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 comer; 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 fireplace, 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, the same as in South American ponchos. But could it be pos- 
sible 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 
