Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a penny more; and so on to the fully glass -- the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp for a shilling.

 

[Old Thunder]

Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander.*

*Usually scrimshaw; scenes drawn on or objects carved from whale teeth or bone.

 

[Old Thunder]

I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full -- not a bed unoccupied.

 

[Old Thunder]

"But avast," he added, tapping his forehead, "you haint no objections to sharing a harpooner's blanket, have ye? I s'pose you are goin' a-whalin', so you'd better get used to that sort of thing."

 

[Old Thunder]

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooner might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooner was not decidedly objectionable, why, rather than wander further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man's blanket.

 

[Old Thunder]

"I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper? -- you want supper? Supper'll be ready directly."

 

[Old Thunder]

I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the Battery.*

*Southern tip of Manhattan in New York City.

 

[Old Thunder]

At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his legs.

 

[Old Thunder]

He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought.

 

[Old Thunder]

At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room.