- end_line
- 1693
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1634
- text
- enraged me not a little, that a man whom I had heard swear so terribly,
should dare to take such a holy name into his mouth. It seemed a sort
of blasphemy, and it seemed like dragging out the best and most
cherished secrets of my soul, for at that time the name of mother was
the center of all my heart’s finest feelings, which ere that, I had
learned to keep secret, deep down in my being.
But I did not outwardly resent the sailor’s words, for that would have
only made the matter worse.
Now this man was a Greenlander by birth, with a very white skin where
the sun had not burnt it, and handsome blue eyes placed wide apart in
his head, and a broad good-humored face, and plenty of curly flaxen
hair. He was not very tall, but exceedingly stout-built, though active;
and his back was as broad as a shield, and it was a great way between
his shoulders. He seemed to be a sort of lady’s sailor, for in his
broken English he was always talking about the nice ladies of his
acquaintance in Stockholm and Copenhagen and a place he called the
Hook, which at first I fancied must be the place where lived the
hook-nosed men that caught fowling-pieces and every other article that
came along. He was dressed very tastefully, too, as if he knew he was a
good-looking fellow. He had on a new blue woolen Havre frock, with a
new silk handkerchief round his neck, passed through one of the
vertebral bones of a shark, highly polished and carved. His trowsers
were of clear white duck, and he sported a handsome pair of pumps, and
a tarpaulin hat bright as a looking-glass, with a long black ribbon
streaming behind, and getting entangled every now and then in the
rigging; and he had gold anchors in his ears, and a silver ring on one
of his fingers, which was very much worn and bent from pulling ropes
and other work on board ship. I thought he might better have left his
jewelry at home.
It was a long time before I could believe that this man was really from
Greenland, though he looked strange enough to me, then, to have come
from the moon; and he was full of stories about that distant country;
how they passed the winters there; and how bitter cold it was; and how
he used to go to bed and sleep twelve hours, and get up again and run
about, and go to bed again, and get up again—there was no telling how
many times, and all in one night; for in the winter time in his
country, he said, the nights were so many weeks long, that a Greenland
baby was sometimes three months old, before it could properly be said
to be a day old.
I had seen mention made of such things before, in books of voyages; but
that was only reading about them, just as you read the Arabian Nights,
which no one ever believes; for somehow, when I read about these
wonderful countries, I never used really to believe what I read, but
only thought it very strange, and a good deal too strange to be
altogether true; though I never thought the men who wrote the book
meant to tell lies. But I don’t know exactly how to explain what I
mean; but this much I will say, that I never believed in Greenland till
I saw this Greenlander. And at first, hearing him talk about Greenland,
only made me still more incredulous. For what business had a man from
Greenland to be in my company? Why was he not at home among the
icebergs, and how could he stand a warm summer’s sun, and not be melted
away? Besides, instead of icicles, there were ear-rings hanging from
his ears; and he did not wear bear-skins, and keep his hands in a huge
muff; things, which I could not help connecting with Greenland and all
Greenlanders.
- title
- Chunk 3