{"id":"01KF7FPMPG6SDZC1FVB5W96P1D","cid":"bafkreid7owxnymhly2cz6tzn2koyxmlz2luq2u7e6y4gzdt3ydspvdcu4a","type":"chapter","properties":{"end_line":1674,"extracted_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:15.047Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"A Bosom Friend","source_file":"01KESYVB66H8YEVTN88DWE9W8D","start_line":1629,"text":"Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed\r\nhis chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were\r\ncheckered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all\r\nover the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years’\r\nWar, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still\r\nmore, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs\r\nwere running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that\r\nhe must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman\r\nin the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to\r\nthink of it. A peddler of heads too—perhaps the heads of his own\r\nbrothers. He might take a fancy to mine—heavens! look at that tomahawk!\r\n\r\nBut there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about\r\nsomething that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me\r\nthat he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall,\r\nor dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in\r\nthe pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image\r\nwith a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days’ old\r\nCongo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought\r\nthat this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar\r\nmanner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened\r\na good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing\r\nbut a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage\r\ngoes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board,\r\nsets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the\r\nandirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty,\r\nso that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine\r\nor chapel for his Congo idol.\r\n\r\nI now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but\r\nill at ease meantime—to see what was next to follow. First he takes\r\nabout a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places\r\nthem carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on\r\ntop and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into\r\na sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the\r\nfire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed\r\nto be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the\r\nbiscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite\r\noffer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to\r\nfancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these\r\nstrange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from\r\nthe devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing\r\nsome pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in\r\nthe most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the\r\nidol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket\r\nas carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.\r","title":"A Bosom Friend"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KF7FPKDT5SHSH1ZQV6ABHQCA","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"book","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KF7FPKDT5SHSH1ZQV6ABHQCA","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"book","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KESYJX0Z6XE0HWTS5N3SDG0B","peer_label":"The Classics","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:16.066Z","ts":"2026-01-18T02:42:16.066Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KF7FCDA7SCSJ6A30TDPDSJQV"}}