{"id":"01KJNXJQTPK7TSDC7NMN368K8C","cid":"bafkreigvdic2l32dryhw3pvo4lungqje4fcns7gpaho64wlszzkbxiq2we","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":86458,"char_start":78537,"chunk_index":11,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1981,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"as 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. I sang out, I could not help it\r\nnow; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.\r\n\r\nStammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him\r\nagainst the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might\r\nbe, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his\r\nguttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my\r\nmeaning.\r\n\r\n“Who-e debel you?”—he at last said—“you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e.”\r\nAnd so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the\r\ndark.\r\n\r\n“Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I. “Landlord! Watch!\r\nCoffin! Angels! save me!”\r\n\r\n“Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!” again growled the\r\ncannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the\r\nhot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire.\r\nBut thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light\r\nin hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.\r\n\r\n“Don’t be afraid now,” said he, grinning again, “Queequeg here wouldn’t\r\nharm a hair of your head.”\r\n\r\n“Stop your grinning,” shouted I, “and why didn’t you tell me that that\r\ninfernal harpooneer was a cannibal?”\r\n\r\n“I thought ye know’d it;—didn’t I tell ye, he was a peddlin’ heads\r\naround town?—but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look\r\nhere—you sabbee me, I sabbee—you this man sleepe you—you sabbee?”\r\n\r\n“Me sabbee plenty”—grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and\r\nsitting up in bed.\r\n\r\n“You gettee in,” he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and\r\nthrowing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a\r\ncivil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a\r\nmoment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely\r\nlooking cannibal. What’s all this fuss I have been making about,\r\nthought I to myself—the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just\r\nas much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep\r\nwith a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.\r\n\r\n“Landlord,” said I, “tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or\r\nwhatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will\r\nturn in with him. But I don’t fancy having a man smoking in bed with\r\nme. It’s dangerous. Besides, I ain’t insured.”\r\n\r\nThis being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely\r\nmotioned me to get into bed—rolling over to one side as much as to\r\nsay—“I won’t touch a leg of ye.”\r\n\r\n“Good night, landlord,” said I, “you may go.”\r\n\r\nI turned in, and never slept better in my life.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.\r\n\r\nUpon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown\r\nover me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost\r\nthought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of\r\nodd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his\r\ntattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no\r\ntwo parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his\r\nkeeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt\r\nsleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this same arm of his, I\r\nsay, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork\r\nquilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I\r\ncould hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues\r\ntogether; and it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I\r\ncould tell that Queequeg was hugging me.\r\n\r\nMy sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a\r\nchild, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me;\r\nwhether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The\r\ncircumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other—I\r\nthink it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little\r\nsweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other,\r\nwas all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,—my\r\nmother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to\r\nbed, though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st June,\r\nthe longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But\r\nthere was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the\r\nthird floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time,\r\nand with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.\r\n\r\nI lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse\r\nbefore I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the small\r\nof my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun\r\nshining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the\r\nstreets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse\r\nand worse—at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my\r\nstockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at\r\nher feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good\r\nslippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but condemning me to\r\nlie abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and\r\nmost conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For\r\nseveral hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than\r\nI have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes.\r\nAt last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and\r\nslowly waking from it—half steeped in dreams—I opened my eyes, and the\r\nbefore sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt\r\na shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and\r\nnothing was to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine.\r\nMy arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable,\r\nsilent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely\r\nseated by my bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there,\r\nfrozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet\r\never thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid\r\nspell would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided\r\naway from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it\r\nall, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in\r\nconfounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I\r\noften puzzle myself with it.\r\n\r\nNow, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the\r\nsupernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to\r\nthose which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg’s pagan arm\r\nthrown round me. But at length all the past night’s events soberly\r\nrecurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to\r\nthe comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm—unlock his\r\nbridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly,\r\nas though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse\r\nhim—“Queequeg!”—but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over, my\r\nneck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a\r\nslight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk\r\nsleeping by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKSZYY4PZZGTPZ89W34AF","peer_label":"narrator","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM1JY61FTG36E9HP0Z97S","peer_label":"peter coffin","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKXNA6Q7NV244AJQKVXKZ","peer_label":"queequeg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMB8TF7BVTCYA460KMH22","peer_label":"queequegs arm","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"body_part","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMAYFVCQ4YR56MVBH8T2N","peer_label":"stepmother","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMB8TB2CQ36H6RYG88NT4","peer_label":"chapter 4 the counterpane","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"document_section","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMAXXZTV9VX9BVH9RB5R6","peer_label":"counterpane","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMC084Q8TZJV7Z75J788A","peer_label":"inn room","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"location","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMB8XJHQYARG3HQPB6D6H","peer_label":"tomahawk","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"weapon_tool","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMBCWFR30C039EH15317P","peer_label":"bed","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"furniture","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCX987KB7SPNAMBAX6EV","peer_label":"childhood nightmare","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"event","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCRE1F3VKYJADHM352SS","peer_label":"supernatural hand","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:42.133Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.606Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:02:47.954Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}