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- 1374
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-18T02:42:17.938Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1311
- text
- Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not
what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the
evening as a looker on.
Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord
cried, “That’s the Grampus’s crew. I seed her reported in the offing
this morning; a three years’ voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now
we’ll have the latest news from the Feegees.”
A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung
open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their
shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters,
all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they
seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from
their boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then,
that they made a straight wake for the whale’s mouth—the bar—when the
wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out
brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon
which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he
swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never
mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador,
or on the weather side of an ice-island.
The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even
with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began
capering about most obstreperously.
I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though
he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his
own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much
noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the
sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though
but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I
will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six
feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I
have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and
burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the
deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem
to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a
Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of
those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When
the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man
slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my
comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his
shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with
them, they raised a cry of “Bulkington! Bulkington! where’s
Bulkington?” and darted out of the house in pursuit of him.
It was now about nine o’clock, and the room seeming almost
supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself
upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the
entrance of the seamen.
No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal
rather not sleep with your own brother. I don’t know how it is, but
people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to
sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town,
and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely
multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should
sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep
two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all
sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and
cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.
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