THE WHITE WHALE « 
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 con- 
cerned), 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 reminis- 
cences 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 favourite with them, they raised a cry of “Bulk- 
ington ! 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 super- 
naturally 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. 
Ho 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 pea, 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 getting late, and any decent 
harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he 
