10 
MOBY DICK; OR 
with its three dismantled masts alone visible ; and an exasperated whale, 
purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of im- 
paling himself upon the three mastheads. 
The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish 
array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with 
glittering teeth resembling ivory saws ; others were tufted with knots of 
human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping 
round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed 
mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous 
cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such 
a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old 
whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were 
storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty 
years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and 
a sunset. And that harpoon — so like a corkscrew now — was flung in 
Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years afterwards slain off 
the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like 
a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty 
feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump. 
Crossing this dusky Imtry, and on through yon low-arched way — cut 
through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with 
fireplaces all round — you enter the public room. A still duskier place 
is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled 
planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft’s 
cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored 
old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like 
table covered with cracked glass-cases, filled with dusty rarities, 
gathered from this wide world’s remotest nooks. Projecting from the 
farther angle of the room stands a dark-looking den — the bar — a rude 
attempt at a right whale’s head. Be that how it may, there stands the 
vast arched bone of the whale’s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive 
beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decan- 
ters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, bustles a 
little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors 
deliriums and death. 
Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. 
Though true cylinders without — within, the villainous green goggling 
