12 
MOBY DICK; OR 
“Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the har- 
pooneer is a dark-complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he 
don’t — he eats nothing but steaks, and likes ’em rare.” 
“The devil he does,” says I. “Where is that harpooneer? Is he 
here?” 
“He’ll be here afore long,” was the answer. 
I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this “dark- 
complexioned” harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that 
if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and 
get into bed before I did. 
Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing 
not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the 
evening as a looker-on. 
Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the land- 
lord cried, “That’s the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the 
offing this morning; a three years’ voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, 
boys; now we’ll have the latest news from the Feejees.” 
A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry ; the door was flung 
open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their 
shaggy watchcoats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, 
all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed 
an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their 
boat, and this was the first house they entered. Ho wonder, then, that 
they made a straight wake for the whale’s mouth — the bar — when the 
wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out 
brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon 
which the old fellow mixed* him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, 
which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatso- 
ever, never mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast 
of Labrador, or on the weather side of an ice-island. 
The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even 
with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began caper- 
ing about most obstreperously. 
I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and 
though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by 
his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as 
