THE WHITE WHALE 
11 
glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel 
meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads’ goblets. 
Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny ; to this a penny more ; 
and so on to the full glass — the Cape Horn measure, which you may 
gulp down for a shilling. 
Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered 
about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of Shrim- 
shander. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accom- 
modated with a room, received for answer that his house was full — not 
a bed unoccupied. “But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, “you 
haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer’s blanket, have ye ? I s’pose 
you are goin’ a-whalin’, so you’d better get used to that sort of thing.” 
I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed ; that if I should 
ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and 
that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the 
harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why, rather than wander 
further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with 
the half of any decent man’s blanket. 
“I thought so. All right ; take a seat. Sup^gr ? — you want supper ? 
Supper’ll be ready directly.” 
I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on 
the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it 
with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the 
space between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full 
sail, but he didn’t make much headway, I thought. 
At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an 
adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland — no fire at all — the landlord 
said he couldn’t afford it. Nothing but tw T o dismal tallow candles, 
each in a winding-sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey- 
jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half-frozen 
fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind — not only meat 
and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! 
One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these 
dumplings in a most direful manner. 
“My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare to a dead 
sartainty.” 
“Landlord,” I whispered, “that ain’t the harpooneer, is it?” 
