Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

"Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess."

 

[Old Thunder]

"Landlord," said I going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow-storm, -- "landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain harpooner. And about harpooner, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories, tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man who you design for my bedfellow -- a sort of connection, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooner is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooner is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution."

 

[Old Thunder]

"Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath, "that's a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooner I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he brought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one he's trying to sell to-night, 'cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions."

 

[ErinAardvark]

I would think Ernie would've been the director of that one.

I didn't think about that at the time I did this. This was back in 2012.

 

[Old Thunder]

This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had no idea of fooling me -- but at the same time what could I think of a harpooner who stayed out of a Saturday night clean in the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolaters?

 

[Old Thunder]

"Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooner is a dangerous man."

 

[Old Thunder]

"He pays reg'lar," was the rejoinder.

 

[Old Thunder]

"But come, it's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes -- it's a nice bed; Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There's plenty room for two to kick about in that bed; it's an almighty big bed that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Same 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.

 

[Old Thunder]

But I stood irresolute; when looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed "I vum it's Sunday -- you won't see that harpooner to-night; he's come to anchor somewhere -- come along then; do come; won't ye come?"

 

[Old Thunder]

I considered the matter a moment, and then up-stairs 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 harpooners to sleep abreast.