I packed a couple of shirts into my old carpetbag, tucked it under my arm, and set off for Cape Horn and the Pacific.
After leaving the familiar streets of Manhattan, I eventually reached New Bedford.
It was a cold Saturday night in December.
I soon discovered that the small boat to Nantucket had already left. There would be no other way to get there until Monday.
Most young men who wanted to go whaling stopped in New Bedford before beginning their voyages. But I had never planned to sail from there.
I had already decided that I would join a ship from Nantucket.
There was something wild and adventurous about that old island that appealed to me.
New Bedford had recently become the center of the American whaling industry, and Nantucket had fallen far behind.
But Nantucket had been there first.
It was the birthplace of American whaling.
According to the old stories, Native American hunters from Nantucket were among the first to chase enormous whales in small canoes.
Another story claimed that an early sailor once loaded his little ship with ordinary stones and threw them at whales to see how close he could get before trying to strike one with a harpoon.
Whether the story was true or not, it was exactly the kind of wild tale that made Nantucket seem special to me.
Now I had an entire night, a full day, and another night to spend in New Bedford before I could continue to Nantucket.
That left me with one immediate problem.
Where was I going to eat and sleep?
The night was miserable.
It was bitterly cold, dark, and wet. I didn’t know a single person in the city.
I reached into my pocket and discovered that I had only a few silver coins.
I stood in the middle of a gloomy street with my bag over my shoulder and looked north, then south.
“Well, Ishmael,” I told myself, “wherever you decide to spend the night, you’d better ask the price first.”
“And don’t expect anything fancy.”
I started walking.
After a while, I passed a place called the Crossed Harpoons.
It looked warm, lively, and expensive.
“No,” I thought. “That’s definitely beyond my budget.”
I kept going.
Soon I came across the Sword-Fish Inn.
Its windows glowed with such bright red light that the snow and ice outside almost seemed to melt.
Everywhere else, the frost was thick and hard, covering the streets like stone.
My worn-out boots were already in terrible condition, and every time I stepped on the frozen ground, the sharp ice hurt my feet.
I stopped for a moment and looked through the windows.
Inside, people were drinking and laughing. I could hear glasses clinking together.
“Too expensive,” I thought. “And far too cheerful for someone carrying as little money as I am.”
Then I remembered my situation.
“Come on, Ishmael,” I told myself. “Don’t stand there blocking the door. Your boots are worn out, you’re freezing, and you can’t afford the place. Keep walking.”
So I did.
Without really thinking about it, I followed the streets toward the waterfront.
If there were cheap places to stay anywhere in town, I figured they would be near the docks.
The streets became darker and emptier.
On both sides were buildings that looked like enormous black shapes.
Here and there, a single candle flickered in a window, like a tiny light inside a tomb.
It was late on Saturday night, and this part of the city was almost completely deserted.
Then I noticed a smoky light coming from a low, wide building.
Its door was standing open.
The place looked as if anyone could walk in.
So I entered.
The first thing I did was trip over a box of ashes near the entrance.
Ashes flew everywhere, almost choking me.
“Wonderful,” I thought. “Are these ashes from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah?”
I had passed the Crossed Harpoons and the Sword-Fish.
“Maybe this place is called the Trap.”
I picked myself up and heard a loud voice coming from somewhere inside.
Curious, I pushed open another door.
What I saw made me stop.
A hundred dark faces turned toward me.
At the front of the room, a black-robed preacher stood behind a pulpit, striking his hand against a large book as he preached.
For a moment, the whole place looked to me like some terrible gathering in hell.
Then I realized what it was.
A Black church service.
The preacher was speaking about the darkness of hell, where people would suffer, weep, and grind their teeth in despair.
I slowly backed toward the door.
“Well, Ishmael,” I muttered, “this is certainly a miserable entertainment for a place called the Trap.”
I left.
I continued toward the docks until I finally saw another weak light.
Above a small building hung an old swinging sign.
On it was a crude picture of a whale shooting a tall column of water into the air.
Underneath were the words:
The Spouter Inn
Peter Coffin
“Coffin?”
I stared at the sign.
“Spouter? Coffin?”
The combination sounded rather ominous.
But Coffin was apparently a common name in Nantucket, so I assumed this Peter Coffin was probably from there.
The inn didn’t look cheerful, but it didn’t look expensive either.
The little wooden building seemed old and badly maintained, almost as though someone had dragged it here from the ruins of a burned neighborhood.
The sign squeaked in the wind.
“Cheap,” I thought.
“And probably the best place I am going to find tonight.”
The building itself was extremely strange.
It was an old house with a steep roof, and one side seemed to be leaning dangerously to the ground.
It stood on a cold, exposed corner where the winter wind howled violently around it.
The wind was so fierce that it reminded me of the storm that once nearly destroyed the Apostle Paul’s ship.
But there is a big difference between watching a storm from inside a warm house and standing outside in it.
If you’re sitting comfortably by a fire with your feet warming beside the coals, even the wildest wind can sound pleasant.
An old writer once made the same point.
He said that a storm seems very different depending on where you experience it.
Look at it through a glass window with the frost safely outside, and it can seem beautiful.
Stand behind a broken window where the frost is freezing both inside and outside, and the same storm becomes something terrifying.
“That is certainly true,” I thought.
My body suddenly seemed like a little house, and my eyes were its windows.
“It’s a shame nobody sealed up the cracks in this house,” I thought. “A little insulation would have been useful.”
But there was no point complaining.
The world had already been built.
There was no way to redesign it now.
Outside the inn, a poor man named Lazarus was lying on the frozen pavement.
He had almost nothing to protect himself from the cold.
He could wrap his hands in rags, cover his ears, and stuff something into his mouth, but none of that would keep the freezing wind away.
Meanwhile, a rich man like Dives could sit comfortably inside his warm house.
He might look out at the stars and admire the beautiful winter night.
“What a wonderful evening!” he might say.
“Look at Orion. Look at the northern lights. Why would anyone complain about the cold?”
He could make his own summer simply by burning enough coal.
But what about Lazarus?
Could the poor man warm his frozen hands by holding them toward the northern lights?
Of course not.
Wouldn’t he rather be somewhere warm, perhaps in Sumatra?
Wouldn’t he rather lie directly beneath the hot tropical sun?
If necessary, wouldn’t he even choose hell itself rather than spend another night freezing on that street?
There is something deeply unfair about a rich man staying warm inside while a poor man freezes outside his door.
It is almost as strange as finding an iceberg floating beside a tropical island.
And yet the rich man is not necessarily as comfortable as he appears.
Even Dives lives in a kind of frozen palace built from other people’s suffering.
He may even proudly call himself a respectable, charitable man while living comfortably on the tears and misery of others.
But enough of that.
I’m going whaling, after all.
There will be plenty of tears, suffering, and blubber waiting for me at sea.
For now, I just need to scrape the ice from my boots, walk inside, and find out what kind of place this Spouter Inn really is.