Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

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

 

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

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

 

[Old Thunder]

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

 

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

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

 

[Old Thunder]

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