{"id":"01KJNXJQTD55P9FEH175FCG1RN","cid":"bafkreifu7rzt3mhwkk5fyumux3hx3uaxas4ida4y3oki3hhynesgtx2xlu","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":58064,"char_start":50559,"chunk_index":7,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1877,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite,\r\nhalf-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to\r\nit, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what\r\nthat marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas,\r\ndeceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight\r\ngale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a\r\nblasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of\r\nthe icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to\r\nthat one portentous something in the picture’s midst. _That_ once found\r\nout, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint\r\nresemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?\r\n\r\nIn fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own,\r\npartly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with\r\nwhom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner\r\nin a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its\r\nthree dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale,\r\npurposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of\r\nimpaling himself upon the three mast-heads.\r\n\r\nThe opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish\r\narray of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with\r\nglittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots\r\nof human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping\r\nround like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed\r\nmower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal\r\nand savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking,\r\nhorrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances\r\nand harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With\r\nthis once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan\r\nSwain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that\r\nharpoon—so like a corkscrew now—was flung in Javan seas, and run away\r\nwith by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The\r\noriginal iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle\r\nsojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last\r\nwas found imbedded in the hump.\r\n\r\nCrossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way—cut\r\nthrough what in old times must have been a great central chimney with\r\nfireplaces all round—you enter the public room. A still duskier place\r\nis this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled\r\nplanks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft’s\r\ncockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored\r\nold ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like\r\ntable covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities\r\ngathered from this wide world’s remotest nooks. Projecting from the\r\nfurther angle of the room stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a rude\r\nattempt at a right whale’s head. Be that how it may, there stands the\r\nvast arched bone of the whale’s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost\r\ndrive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old\r\ndecanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction,\r\nlike another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him),\r\nbustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells\r\nthe sailors deliriums and death.\r\n\r\nAbominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true\r\ncylinders without—within, the villanous green goggling glasses\r\ndeceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians\r\nrudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads’ goblets. Fill to\r\n_this_ mark, and your charge is but a penny; to _this_ a penny more;\r\nand so on to the full glass—the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp\r\ndown for a shilling.\r\n\r\nUpon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about\r\na table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of _skrimshander_. I\r\nsought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with\r\na room, received for answer that his house was full—not a bed\r\nunoccupied. “But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, “you haint no\r\nobjections to sharing a harpooneer’s blanket, have ye? I s’pose you are\r\ngoin’ a-whalin’, so you’d better get used to that sort of thing.”\r\n\r\nI told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should\r\never do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that\r\nif he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the\r\nharpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander\r\nfurther about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with\r\nthe half of any decent man’s blanket.\r\n\r\n“I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?—you want supper?\r\nSupper’ll be ready directly.”\r\n\r\nI sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the\r\nBattery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with\r\nhis jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space\r\nbetween his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but\r\nhe didn’t make much headway, I thought.\r\n\r\nAt last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an\r\nadjoining room. It was cold as Iceland—no fire at all—the landlord said\r\nhe couldn’t afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a\r\nwinding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold\r\nto our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the\r\nfare was of the most substantial kind—not only meat and potatoes, but\r\ndumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a\r\ngreen box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful\r\nmanner.\r\n\r\n“My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare to a dead\r\nsartainty.”\r\n\r\n“Landlord,” I whispered, “that aint the harpooneer is it?”\r\n\r\n“Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the\r\nharpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he\r\ndon’t—he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes ’em rare.”\r\n\r\n“The devil he does,” says I. “Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?”\r\n\r\n“He’ll be here afore long,” was the answer.\r\n\r\nI could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this “dark\r\ncomplexioned” harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so\r\nturned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into\r\nbed before I did.\r\n\r\nSupper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not\r\nwhat else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the\r\nevening as a looker on.\r\n\r\nPresently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord\r\ncried, “That’s the Grampus’s crew. I seed her reported in the offing\r\nthis morning; a three years’ voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now\r\nwe’ll have the latest news from the Feegees.”\r\n\r\nA tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung\r\nopen, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their\r\nshaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters,\r\nall bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they\r\nseemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from\r\ntheir boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then,\r\nthat they made a straight wake for the whale’s mouth—the bar—when the\r\nwrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out\r\nbrimmers all round."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.597Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.597Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}