“My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty.”

“Landlord,” I whispered, “that aint the harpooneer is it?”

“Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap.  He never eats dumplings, he don’t—­ he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes ’em rare.”

“The devil he does,” says I.  “Where is that harpooneer?  Is he here?”

“He’ll be here afore long,” was the answer.

I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this “dark complexioned” harpooneer.  At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did.

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on.

Presently a rioting noise was heard without.  Starting up, the landlord cried, “That’s the Grampus’s crew.  I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a three years’ voyage, and a full ship.  Hurrah, boys; now we’ll have the latest news from the Feegees.”

A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough.  Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador.  They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered.  No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale’s mouth—­ the bar—­when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round.  One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of an ice-island.

The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously.

I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest.  This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him.  He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam.  I have seldom seen such brawn in a man.  His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give