Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

I had been cutting up some caper or other -- I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless, -- my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in the year in our hemisphere.

 

[Old Thunder]

I felt dreadfully.

 

[Old Thunder]

But there was no help for it, so upstairs I went to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.

 

[Old Thunder]

I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection.

 

[Old Thunder]

Sixteen hours in bed! the small of my back ached to think of it.

 

[Old Thunder]

And it was so light too; the sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house.

 

[Old Thunder]

I felt worse and worse -- at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good slippering for my misbehavior; anything indeed but condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time.

 

[Old Thunder]

But she was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room.

 

[Old Thunder]

For several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes.

 

[Old Thunder]

At last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it -- half steeped in dreams -- I opened my eyes, and the before sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness.