When you entered the gable-fronted Spouter-Inn, you first found yourself in a wide, low hallway that seemed to stretch in every direction. The old wooden walls looked like the sides of some ancient ship that had been left to rot.
On one wall hung a huge oil painting. It was so dark with smoke and age that, at first, it was almost impossible to tell what it showed. The picture was covered in strange patches of light and shadow, and the poor lighting made it look even more mysterious.
I spent a long time staring at it. I even came back several times and asked people nearby what they thought it was supposed to be.
At first, I imagined all kinds of things.
Maybe it was the Black Sea during a midnight storm.
Maybe it showed the four elements fighting each other.
Maybe it was some dark and empty wasteland.
Perhaps it was a frozen land at the end of the world.
Or maybe it was supposed to represent Time itself breaking apart.
But one enormous dark shape in the middle of the painting kept drawing my attention.
After staring at it for long enough, I finally began to see what it might be.
It looked like a gigantic fish.
Could that really be a whale?
Eventually, after comparing my own ideas with the opinions of several old sailors who had seen the painting many times, I decided that the artist had probably meant to show a ship caught in a terrible hurricane near Cape Horn.
Only three broken masts remained above the waves.
And beside the sinking ship was a furious whale, apparently trying to leap over the vessel—but instead impaling itself on the ship’s three mastheads.
It was an ugly, confusing picture, but there was something strangely powerful about it.
Across the hallway hung an even stranger collection of weapons.
There were enormous clubs and spears, some covered with sharp teeth that looked like ivory saws. Others had bundles of human hair tied around them. One weapon was shaped like a giant sickle, with a long handle that curved around like the path left by a farmer cutting grass.
Looking at them made me wonder what kind of savage could have carried such terrible weapons into battle.
Mixed among them were old whaling lances and harpoons, most of them rusty, broken, or bent.
Some even had stories attached to them.
One enormous lance had once belonged to a sailor named Nathan Swain. Fifty years earlier, he had supposedly killed fifteen whales with it between sunrise and sunset.
Another harpoon had been thrown into the waters around Java. A whale carried it away, and years later that same whale was killed near Cape Blanco.
The harpoon had entered near the whale’s tail and traveled almost forty feet through its body before becoming lodged in its hump.
I crossed the dark hallway and entered the public room through a low archway.
The passage had apparently been built through what had once been a huge central chimney with fireplaces around it.
The public room was even darker than the hallway.
The ceiling beams were low and heavy, while the old wooden floorboards were deeply worn. On a stormy night, with the wind shaking the building, the whole inn felt like an old ship being tossed around at sea.
Along one wall stood a long table covered with cracked glass cases. Inside were dusty objects collected from distant parts of the world.
At the far end of the room was the bar.
It had been built to look like the head of a right whale.
The enormous curved jawbone was so large that a carriage could almost have passed underneath it.
Inside the whale’s jaw stood a tiny, old, wrinkled bartender. He kept shelves of bottles and glasses around him and happily sold sailors enough alcohol to make them forget their troubles—or kill themselves trying.
The glasses he used were terrible.
They looked like ordinary cylinders from the outside, but inside they narrowed toward the bottom, making the drinks appear larger than they really were.
Several rough lines had been scratched around the glasses to mark different prices.
Fill the glass to one line, and it cost a penny.
Fill it to the next, and it cost another penny.
Fill it all the way to the top—the special Cape Horn measure—and it cost a shilling.
When I entered the inn, several young sailors were sitting around a table under a weak light, examining pieces of carved whalebone.
I went over to the landlord.
“I’d like a room for the night,” I told him.
“Can’t do it,” he replied. “We’re completely full. Not a single bed left.”
Then he tapped his forehead and smiled.
“But wait. You wouldn’t mind sharing a bed with a harpooneer, would you?”
“A harpooneer?”
“I suppose you’re going whaling yourself. If so, you’d better get used to that kind of thing.”
“I don’t like sharing a bed with anyone,” I said.
“Neither do I,” he said.
“If I ever had to share one, it would depend on who the other man was. But if you really have nowhere else for me, and the harpooneer isn’t too unpleasant, I’ll take half the bed. I’d rather do that than wander around this strange town on a night this cold.”
“I thought you’d say that. Fine. Sit down.”
He pointed toward a wooden bench.
“Supper?”
“Yes, I’d like some supper.”
“It’ll be ready soon.”
I sat on an old wooden bench covered with carvings.
At one end, a sailor was sitting quietly with a knife, carving away at the wood between his knees. He was trying to carve a ship under full sail, but from what I could see, the ship wasn’t making much progress.
Soon, four or five of us were called into the next room for supper.
The place was freezing.
There wasn’t even a fire.
“Can’t afford one,” the landlord explained.
Two miserable candles were our only source of warmth and light.
We kept our heavy coats buttoned tightly around us and held cups of hot tea in our half-frozen hands.
Fortunately, the food was excellent.
There was meat, potatoes, and even dumplings.
Dumplings for supper!
One young man wearing a green coat attacked the dumplings with such enthusiasm that the landlord finally warned him.
“My boy, you’re going to have the worst nightmare of your life.”
I leaned toward the landlord.
“That isn’t the harpooneer, is it?”
“No.”
He gave me a strange grin.
“The harpooneer is a dark-skinned fellow. He never eats dumplings. He eats nothing but steak—and he likes it rare.”
“The devil he does.”
I stared at him.
“Where is this harpooneer?”
“He’ll be here before long.”
I immediately became suspicious.
If I was going to share a bed with this man, I decided that he would have to get into it before I did.
After supper, everyone returned to the barroom.
Since I had nothing else to do, I decided to sit quietly and watch the sailors.
A few minutes later, we heard loud voices and heavy footsteps outside.
The landlord suddenly looked excited.
“That’s the Grampus’s crew! I saw their ship offshore this morning. They’ve been gone three years, and she’s coming back full!”
He laughed.
“Come on, boys! We’ll finally hear the latest news from the South Seas!”
Heavy sea boots came stomping through the hallway.
The door flew open, and a wild group of sailors came pouring into the inn.
They wore thick, shaggy coats and woolen scarves. Their clothes were wet, torn, and covered with salt and dirt. Ice clung to their beards.
They looked like a group of bears that had just escaped from the Arctic.
They had only just come ashore, so they went straight for the bar.
The little old bartender immediately filled their glasses.
One sailor complained that he had a terrible cold.
The bartender mixed him a thick drink made from gin and molasses.
“This will cure any cold in the world,” he declared. “I don’t care how long you’ve had it. Labrador, an iceberg, anywhere!”
The sailors quickly became drunk.
They began shouting, laughing, dancing, and pushing each other around.
But one man stayed apart from the others.
He didn’t seem interested in joining the celebration. He wasn’t trying to ruin anyone else’s fun, but he clearly preferred to remain quiet.
For some reason, I immediately became interested in him.
Later, I would learn that he was destined to become my shipmate, although for now he would only be my sleeping companion.
He was an enormous man, well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a powerful chest.
I had rarely seen a man built like him.
His face was dark brown from years under the sun, and his teeth looked startlingly white against his skin.
There was something troubled in his eyes, as though he carried memories he would rather forget.
His voice told me he was from the South.
Because of his height and build, I guessed he might have come from the mountains of Virginia.
As the sailors’ celebration grew louder, the man quietly slipped away.
I didn’t see him again that night.
A few minutes later, his shipmates noticed that he was missing.
“Bulkington!”
“Where’s Bulkington?”
“Bulkington!”
They rushed outside to find him.
It was now around nine o’clock.
After the noise of the sailors disappeared, the room suddenly seemed unbelievably quiet.
I began congratulating myself on an idea I had just had.
No one really wants to share a bed.
In fact, most people would rather not even sleep with their own brother.
People like privacy when they sleep.
And sharing a bed with a complete stranger in a strange inn, in a strange town, was bad enough.
Sharing it with a harpooneer was even worse.
The more I thought about the man, the less I liked the idea.
A harpooneer’s clothes were hardly likely to be clean or comfortable.
And it was getting late.
Where was this man?
What if he suddenly came stumbling into the room at midnight after spending the evening in some filthy place?
I finally called out to the landlord.
“Landlord! I’ve changed my mind about the harpooneer. I’m not sleeping with him. I’ll sleep on this bench.”
“Suit yourself,” he said.
“I’m sorry I can’t give you a tablecloth for a mattress. This bench is pretty rough.”
He ran his hand over the hard wooden surface.
“But wait. I’ve got a carpenter’s plane behind the bar. I’ll smooth it out for you.”
He fetched the tool, dusted the bench with his old silk handkerchief, and began shaving the wood away.
Wood chips flew everywhere.
Then the plane suddenly struck a hard knot.
The landlord nearly twisted his wrist trying to cut through it.
“For heaven’s sake, stop!” I said. “It’s soft enough. You’re never going to turn a wooden board into a feather bed.”
The landlord grinned, gathered up the wood shavings, threw them into the stove, and went away.
I examined my new bed.
It was too short by about a foot.
I could solve that problem by using a chair.
But it was also too narrow.
The other bench was several inches higher, so I couldn’t join them together.
I moved the first bench against the wall and left a small space behind it for my back.
Then I discovered another problem.
Cold air was blowing in beneath the window.
Another draft came through the broken door.
The two currents met above my bed and created a collection of tiny whirlwinds.
This was hopeless.
“The devil take that harpooneer,” I muttered.
Then another idea occurred to me.
Perhaps I could sneak into his room before he arrived, lock the door from inside, and sleep in his bed.
But then I imagined waking up the next morning and finding the harpooneer waiting outside, ready to knock me flat.
No.
That wasn’t a good plan either.
I looked around again.
There was no way I could spend a comfortable night on that bench.
Maybe I had been unfair to the stranger.
Perhaps the harpooneer wasn’t as bad as I imagined.
I decided to wait.
“He’ll come back sooner or later,” I thought. “I’ll take a good look at him first. Maybe we’ll get along perfectly well.”
The other guests gradually went upstairs to bed.
Still, there was no sign of my harpooneer.
At nearly midnight, I called the landlord again.
“What kind of man is he? Does he always stay out this late?”
The landlord chuckled.
“No. Usually he’s an early bird. Early to bed, early to rise.”
“Then where is he?”
“Well, tonight he’s gone out selling something.”
“What?”
The landlord grinned.
“He’s selling his head.”
I stared at him.
“Selling his head?”
“That’s right.”
“What kind of ridiculous story are you telling me?”
The landlord calmly took out a stick and began whittling it into a toothpick.
“Maybe you won’t think it’s so funny if the harpooneer hears you insulting his head.”
“I’ll break it for him!” I shouted.
“It’s already broken,” he replied.
“Broken?”
“That’s why he can’t sell it.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“Landlord, are you seriously telling me that this harpooneer is walking around town on a Saturday night trying to sell his own head?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“What kind of man is this?”
“Well, he came back from the South Seas with several embalmed heads from New Zealand. They’re valuable curiosities. He’s already sold all but one, and he’s trying to sell the last one tonight.”
“Why tonight?”
“Because tomorrow is Sunday. He can’t very well walk around selling human heads while everyone is going to church.”
I was speechless.
The landlord continued.
“He tried doing it last Sunday, too. I caught him just as he was leaving with four heads hanging from a string. Looked just like a string of onions.”
At last, I understood what he had meant.
The landlord hadn’t been joking.
But that didn’t make me feel any better.
What kind of harpooneer went around selling the preserved heads of dead people?
“Landlord,” I said seriously, “that man sounds dangerous.”
“He pays his bills regularly.”
“That doesn’t prove he’s safe!”
“Come on. It’s very late. You should go to bed.”
He pointed upstairs.
“It’s a good bed. Sal and I used to sleep in it before we got married.”
He laughed.
“There was plenty of room for both of us. Before we gave it up, we even put the children at the foot of the bed.”
I looked at him.
“One night I rolled over in my sleep and accidentally knocked little Sam onto the floor. Nearly broke his arm. After that, Sal said the bed wasn’t big enough.”
He picked up a candle.
“Come on. I’ll show you the room.”
I hesitated.
The landlord suddenly looked at the clock.
“Good heavens! It’s Sunday already.”
He shrugged.
“You won’t see the harpooneer tonight. He’s probably anchored somewhere.”
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
I finally followed him upstairs.
He led me into a tiny room that was almost as cold as the outside air.
And there, just as he had promised, was an enormous bed.
It was easily large enough for four harpooneers to sleep side by side.
“There you are,” the landlord said.
He placed the candle on an old sea chest that served as both a washstand and a table.
“Make yourself comfortable. Good night.”
I turned toward the bed.
When I looked back, he was gone.
I pulled back the blanket and inspected the mattress.
It wasn’t exactly elegant, but it looked acceptable.
I looked around the room.
There was the bed, the chest, a rough shelf, four bare walls, and a piece of painted cardboard covering the fireplace. The picture showed a man attacking a whale.
There was also a hammock tied up in one corner.
Beside it sat a large sailor’s bag, probably containing the harpooneer’s clothes.
On the shelf were some strange-looking bone fishhooks.
A tall harpoon stood beside the bed.
Then I noticed something lying on the chest.
“What is this?”
I picked it up and held it close to the candle.
It looked like a large, shaggy mat with little rattling pieces hanging around its edges.
There was a hole in the middle.
It reminded me of a South American poncho.
Could this really be something the harpooneer wore?
I put it on to find out.
It was incredibly heavy and thick.
It was also slightly damp.
I walked over to the small piece of glass on the wall and looked at myself.
I had never seen anything so ridiculous.
I tore the thing off so quickly that I nearly twisted my neck.
I sat on the bed and began thinking about the mysterious harpooneer, his collection of heads, and this strange mat.
After a while, I stood up.
I took off my heavy jacket.
Then my coat.
I stood there thinking in my shirt sleeves.
But the room was becoming colder by the minute.
Remembering that the landlord had said the harpooneer probably wouldn’t return that night, I finally gave up.
I removed my trousers and boots, blew out the candle, climbed into bed, and tried to sleep.
The mattress was so uncomfortable that I couldn’t imagine what it was stuffed with.
Maybe corn husks.
Maybe broken dishes.
I tossed and turned for a long time.
Eventually, I began to fall asleep.
Then I heard heavy footsteps in the hallway.
A faint light appeared beneath the door.
My heart jumped.
“That must be him,” I thought.
“The head-selling harpooneer.”
I lay perfectly still.
I decided not to speak until he spoke first.
The door opened.
The stranger entered carrying a candle in one hand and the preserved New Zealand head in the other.
Without even looking at me, he placed the candle on the floor in the corner.
Then he began working on the ropes of the large sailor’s bag.
I desperately wanted to see his face.
But he kept his back toward me while he untied the bag.
Finally, he turned around.
I nearly screamed.
His face was a strange dark purple-yellow color.
Large black squares covered parts of his cheeks.
For a moment, I thought he had been badly injured.
“Good heavens,” I thought. “He’s been in a fight!”
But then he moved closer to the candlelight.
Those black squares weren’t bandages.
They were tattoos.
I suddenly remembered hearing about a white sailor who had been captured by cannibals and tattooed.
So that must be what had happened to this man.
“All right,” I told myself.
“It’s only his skin. A man can still be honest no matter what he looks like.”
But his skin was still unbelievably strange.
Perhaps it was simply the result of years under the tropical sun.
I had never been to the South Seas, so I couldn’t say.
The harpooneer didn’t seem to notice me at all.
He opened his bag and pulled out a small tomahawk and a sealskin wallet.
He placed them on the old chest.
Then he took the preserved New Zealand head and stuffed it into the bag.
Next, he removed his hat.
I nearly cried out again.
The man was almost completely bald.
There was only a small knot of hair twisted on the front of his head.
Under the candlelight, his purple scalp looked like the skull of something that had been left to rot.
If he hadn’t been standing between me and the door, I might have run out of the room.
I considered climbing through the window.
But we were on the second floor.
I wasn’t normally a coward.
But I had absolutely no idea what this man was.
Ignorance makes fear much worse.
And at that moment, I was so frightened of him that I could hardly think.
The harpooneer continued undressing.
Soon I saw that the tattoos covered his entire body.
His chest, arms, back, and legs were covered with the same dark patterns.
He looked as though he had survived some terrible war while wearing a shirt made of patches.
His legs were covered in strange dark shapes that looked like frogs climbing up palm trees.
There was no doubt in my mind now.
This man was some savage from the South Seas who had been hired onto a whaling ship.
And now he was staying in a Christian town.
I began to panic.
He sold human heads.
Maybe they were the heads of his own enemies.
What if he decided he wanted mine?
I glanced nervously at his tomahawk.
Then something else caught my attention.
The harpooneer walked over to the heavy coat he had hung on a chair.
He searched through one of its pockets.
Finally, he pulled out a strange little figure.
It had a large hump on its back and was the color of a very dark-skinned baby.
For a moment, I wondered if it might actually be a preserved child.
But when he held it up, I could see that it was made of wood.
It was an idol.
The man walked over to the fireplace and removed the painted board covering it.
He placed the little idol between the iron bars.
The fireplace was black with soot, and somehow it seemed like the perfect little shrine for his strange god.
I watched from the bed, hardly daring to move.
The harpooneer took a handful of wood shavings from his coat pocket and carefully placed them in front of the idol.
Then he put a piece of ship’s biscuit on top.
He lit the shavings.
A small fire suddenly appeared.
The man quickly reached into the flames several times, burning his fingers as he tried to retrieve the biscuit.
At last he pulled it out.
He blew away the ashes and heat, then politely offered the biscuit to the little wooden idol.
The idol, of course, did nothing.
The harpooneer continued making strange sounds.
Sometimes it sounded like singing.
Sometimes it sounded like praying.
His face twisted and moved in an unsettling way.
Finally, he put out the fire.
He picked up the idol and stuffed it back into his coat as casually as a hunter putting a dead bird into a bag.
All of this made me even more nervous.
The man now seemed ready to get into bed.
I knew that if I was ever going to say something, this was my last chance.
But I hesitated.
That hesitation nearly cost me.
The harpooneer picked up his tomahawk and examined it.
Then he held the handle to his mouth and blew a huge cloud of tobacco smoke through it.
The next moment, he blew out the candle.
The room went completely dark.
Then the savage jumped into bed beside me.
I couldn’t help myself.
I screamed.
The stranger grunted in surprise and began feeling around for me in the darkness.
I scrambled toward the wall.
“Please!” I stammered. “Let me get up and light the lamp!”
But he clearly didn’t understand me.
“Who you?” he growled.
“You no speak? I kill you!”
His tomahawk began swinging through the darkness.
“Landlord!” I screamed.
“For God’s sake! Peter Coffin! Somebody help me!”
“Speak!” the stranger shouted.
“Tell me who you are, or I kill you!”
The tomahawk swung dangerously close to me.
Hot tobacco ashes flew through the darkness.
I was terrified my clothes would catch fire.
Then, thank heaven, the landlord appeared at the door with a candle.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, grinning as usual.
“Queequeg wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Stop grinning!” I shouted.
“Why didn’t you tell me that this man was a cannibal?”
“I thought you already knew.”
He looked completely surprised.
“Didn’t I tell you he was selling heads around town?”
“That doesn’t mean I expected him to be a cannibal!”
The landlord turned to the stranger.
“Queequeg, listen. You understand me?”
Queequeg sat up in bed, still smoking his pipe.
“Me sabbee plenty,” he said.
The landlord pointed toward me.
“This man sleep with you. You understand?”
Queequeg nodded.
“Me sabbee.”
Then he looked at me and motioned toward the bed with his tomahawk.
“You gettee in.”
He pulled the blankets aside.
Despite everything about him, he was being surprisingly polite.
I stood there for a moment and looked at him.
Yes, he was covered in tattoos.
Yes, he was a cannibal.
Yes, he had a tomahawk.
But beneath all that, he was still a human being.
He had just as much reason to be afraid of me as I had to be afraid of him.
I thought about it for a moment.
“Better to sleep beside a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian,” I decided.
I turned to the landlord.
“Tell him to put away the tomahawk. And tell him to stop smoking. I don’t want someone smoking in bed beside me. It’s dangerous.”
The landlord explained this to Queequeg.
Queequeg immediately put the weapon and pipe aside.
Then he politely motioned for me to get into bed.
He rolled over to the other side, leaving plenty of space between us.
It was as if he were saying, “Don’t worry. I won’t touch you.”
“Good night, landlord,” I said.
“You can go now.”
I climbed into bed beside Queequeg.
And despite everything that had happened that night, I slept better than I had in a very long time.