Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

No one having previously heard his history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life he had led.

 

[Old Thunder]

When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed.

 

[Old Thunder]

However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner: when, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit.

 

[MikaelaMuppet]

I knew this story would come back eventually.

 

[Old Thunder]

Like most old-fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea.

 

[Old Thunder]

The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste.

 

[Old Thunder]

Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the manropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel.

 

[Old Thunder]

The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood, so that at every step there was a joint.

 

[Old Thunder]

At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary.

 

[Old Thunder]

For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec.*

*Canadian city; the upper city is on a bluff fortified in earlier warfare.