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upon the three mast-heads.
    The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish
array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with
glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots
of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping
round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed
mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous
cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such
a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old
whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were
storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed,
fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a
sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon—so like a corkscrew now—was
flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years afterwards
slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the
tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man,
travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the
hump.
    Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way—cut
through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with
fireplaces all round—you enter the public room. A still duskier
place is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old
wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some
old craft's cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this
corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a
long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled
with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks.
Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking
den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right whale's head. Be that how it
may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a
coach might almost drive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves,
ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws
of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed
they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their
money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death.
    Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though
true cylinders without—within, the villanous green goggling glasses
deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel
meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads'
goblets. Fill to THIS mark, and your charge is but a penny; to THIS
a penny more; and so on to the full glass—the Cape Horn measure,
which you may gulp down for a shilling.
    Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered
about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of
SKRIMSHANDER. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be
accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was
full—not a bed unoccupied. "But avast," he added, tapping his
forehead, "you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer's blanket,
have ye? I s'pose you are goin' a-whalin', so you'd better get used
to that sort of thing."
    I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should
ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and
that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the
harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander
further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up
with the half of any decent man's blanket.
    "I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?—you want supper?
Supper'll be ready directly."
    I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on
the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning
it with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at
the space between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under
full sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought.
    At last some four or five of us