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1Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved
2not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other, the
3stranger entered the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the floor in
4one corner, and then began working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I
5was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This
6accomplished, however, he turned round--when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark, purplish,
7yellow colour, here and there stuck over with large blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a
8terrible bedfellow; he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that moment
9he chanced to turn his face so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all, those
10black squares on his cheeks. They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this; but soon
11an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white man--a whaleman too--who, falling among the
12cannibals, had been tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages, must have
13met with a similar adventure. And what is it, thought I, after all! It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any
14sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and
15completely independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning;
16but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South
17Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were
18passing through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty having opened his
19bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on.
20Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head--a ghastly thing enough--and
21crammed it down into the bag. He now took off his hat--a new beaver hat--when I came nigh singing out with fresh
22surprise. There was no hair on his head--none to speak of at least--nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his
23forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger stood between
24me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner. Even as it was, I thought something
25of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling
26purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and
27confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus
28broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to
29address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him. Meanwhile, he continued the
30business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with
31the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty
32Years' War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a
33parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some
34abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I
35quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too--perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to
36mine--heavens! look at that tomahawk! But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something that
37completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or
38wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a
39curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days' old Congo baby.
40Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some
41similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I
42concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the
43empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between
44the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very
45appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol. I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image,
46feeling but ill at ease meantime--to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings out
47of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying
48the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the
49fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded
50in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little
51negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these
52strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a
53sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural
54manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego
55pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock. All these queer proceedings increased my
56uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into
57bed 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
58so long been bound. But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from
59the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he
60puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk
61between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of
62astonishment he began feeling me. Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the wall,
63and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But
64his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning. "Who-e debel you?"--he at last
65said--"you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e." And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark.
66"Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!" "Speak-e! tell-ee me
67who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the
68hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came
69into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him. "Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again,
70"Queequeg here wouldn't harm a hair of your head."
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