Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one.

 

[Old Thunder]

However, I had never been in the South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the skin.

 

[Old Thunder]

Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning, this harpooner never noticed me at all.

 

[Old Thunder]

But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a sealskin wallet with the hair on.

 

[Old Thunder]

Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head -- a ghastly thing enough -- and crammed it down into the bag.

 

[Old Thunder]

He now took off his hat -- a new beaver hat -- when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise.

 

[Old Thunder]

There was no hair on his head -- none to speak of at least -- nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead.

 

[Old Thunder]

His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull.

 

[Old Thunder]

Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.

 

[Old Thunder]

Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor back.