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"Stop your grinning," said I, "and why didn't you tell me that that infernal harpooner was a cannibal?"

"Queequeg here wouldn't harm a hair of your head."

"Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again.

But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.

"Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire.

"Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!"

"Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I.

And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark.

"Who-e debel you?" -- he at last said -- "you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e."

But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning.

Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again.

I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving me a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.

The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me.

Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke.

But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.

All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which I had so long been bound.

At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.

All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner.

But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips.

Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro.