{"id":"01KJNXJQTN46W5V7JQ5Q9CD5KJ","cid":"bafkreidlcpsdoeja2pop2shivneomprrjytmwxp3hswdsvqknalughkdha","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":79300,"char_start":71471,"chunk_index":10,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1958,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"the harpooneer’s not coming home at all that night, it being so very\r\nlate, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots,\r\nand then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself\r\nto the care of heaven.\r\n\r\nWhether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery,\r\nthere is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not\r\nsleep for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had\r\npretty nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard\r\na heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into\r\nthe room from under the door.\r\n\r\nLord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal\r\nhead-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word\r\ntill spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New\r\nZealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without\r\nlooking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on\r\nthe floor in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted\r\ncords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I was\r\nall eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time\r\nwhile employed in unlacing the bag’s mouth. This accomplished, however,\r\nhe turned round—when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was\r\nof a dark, purplish, yellow colour, here and there stuck over with\r\nlarge blackish looking squares. Yes, it’s just as I thought, he’s a\r\nterrible bedfellow; he’s been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here\r\nhe is, just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his\r\nface so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not be\r\nsticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were\r\nstains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this;\r\nbut soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story\r\nof a white man—a whaleman too—who, falling among the cannibals, had\r\nbeen tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course\r\nof his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And\r\nwhat is it, thought I, after all! It’s only his outside; a man can be\r\nhonest in any sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly\r\ncomplexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely\r\nindependent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be\r\nnothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot\r\nsun’s tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had\r\nnever been in the South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these\r\nextraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were\r\npassing through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at\r\nall. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced\r\nfumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a\r\nseal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in\r\nthe middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head—a ghastly\r\nthing enough—and crammed it down into the bag. He now took off his\r\nhat—a new beaver hat—when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise.\r\nThere was no hair on his head—none to speak of at least—nothing but a\r\nsmall scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now\r\nlooked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger\r\nstood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker\r\nthan ever I bolted a dinner.\r\n\r\nEven as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but\r\nit was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this\r\nhead-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.\r\nIgnorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and\r\nconfounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of\r\nhim as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at\r\nthe dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game\r\nenough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer\r\nconcerning what seemed inexplicable in him.\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, 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\n\r\nAll these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing\r\nhim now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business\r\noperations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time,\r\nnow or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which\r\nI had so long been bound.\r\n\r\nBut the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.\r\nTaking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for\r\nan instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the\r\nhandle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment\r\nthe light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between\r\nhis teeth, sprang into bed with me."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKTMW4N632YDGH6430F5J","peer_label":"south seas","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"geographical_region","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMAYH8ZHD1HRATCZH4SXC","peer_label":"harpooneers beaver hat","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"clothing_item","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMATJJEY04P7CPTHG7H62","peer_label":"seal-skin wallet","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"accessory","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMB4FDHTFDJY8BMTE7D6V","peer_label":"the harpooneer","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMBBG72PW9P9CD3D971QA","peer_label":"harpooneers tomahawk","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"weapon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCV036Y9B3HY1WQVGTQ9","peer_label":"fire-place","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"architectural_feature","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMPDDBKCHK46XCBBECSV9","peer_label":"pagan psalmody","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"religious_practice","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMQHHPDW63RAAXMRNCANN","peer_label":"cannibals","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"group_of_people","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCWEVMTPWFSFVBGRZ546","peer_label":"wooden idol","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"religious_artifact","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCQWZDYC0WG5EYFAHYP9","peer_label":"old chest","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"furniture","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMA8F931JKYT5XHNY8800","peer_label":"harpooneers large bag","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"container","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCWJZ811Q08VW0F24TN6","peer_label":"harpooneers grego","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"clothing_item","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMSZE15RN4SWZYEFBK36N","peer_label":"ship biscuit","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"food_item","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMTFPYRGEQAJMXC9ZZ12Z","peer_label":"lamp","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"light_source","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMBDYA4TDS9B3FJ355VS2","peer_label":"christian country","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"geographical_region","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCTTVQ2NXPSXSGA2HWBA","peer_label":"new zealand head","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"artifact","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMAWYHY9Y36WJJPKCPHC8","peer_label":"the narrator","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMW8R5GNJFY7DH4S9V6XC","peer_label":"tobacco smoke","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"substance","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCZC2008PXP9PC1NM0KT","peer_label":"shavings","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"material","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMSZHZYRZJ865AN60XPFB","peer_label":"whaleman","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"occupation","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:07.195Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.605Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:08:08.504Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}