Search results

"Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship -- a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep.

"He sees no black sky and raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him.

"But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard; when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah's head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep.

"A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to break.

"But the sea rebels; he will not bear the wicked burden.

"That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah.

"And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea.

"Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish, praying...

"'Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!' he groans, 'straight upward, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!'

"The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.

"But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appalls him.

"The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes roll around the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance.

"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room...

"Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowel's wards.

"The air is close, and Jonah gasps.

"All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead.

"Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of convicts' cells behind never allowed to be locked within.

"Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock contains no key.

"'Thou look'st like it,' says the Captain, 'there's thy room.'

"'Point out my state-room, sir,' says Jonah now, 'I'm travel-weary; I need sleep.'