Chapter 8 3.Whale Inn

In the dark doorway, there are several old-fashioned wall panels leaning, and on the facing wall is a huge oil painting.It was smoky and dusty, and with the help of a few slanted rays of light, it was barely possible to distinguish the large and small shadows and color patches on it. These shadows and blocks of color criss-cross suspiciously, a dark ominous thing occupies the center of the picture, and a few blue slanted lines implicate some dirty things inexplicably: it is the storm hitting the sea in the middle of the night ?Is it a war between fire and water?Or is it just a withered heather?

The scene of numerous altars is enough to make any weak-willed person go crazy!But you will suddenly wake up from it: Oh, it is it, it is it, the monster of the sea! Afterwards, I asked my neighbors and interviewed many elderly people. Based on various opinions, I made the following judgment on this painting: This is a boat caught in a big whirlwind at Cape Horn. It was about to sink but not sunk, and a few bare masts were still struggling on the water; a large whale was obviously angry at the sunken ship blocking its way, and it was fighting against the three masts, and rushed on it frantically.

On the wall beside the oil painting, there is a row of various guns and spears. These are not ordinary guns and spears, but strange things full of pagan colors: some have shining teeth; some have a lock of human hair; Get up murderous. Among them are several rusty whaling javelins, famous weapons of that kind in legend. That rotten whale gun was said to have killed fifteen whales in a row fifty years ago, and was carried into the sea after the last time it impaled a large whale, which was killed a few years later. Just found the gun again. The gun had hit the whale in the head, but the gun was found on the tail of the fish, and it had traveled forty feet on the fish!

Through the low corridor, finally entered the house. The inside of the house was darker than the outside, the beams were low, and the floor was uneven.It makes people think that they have entered the cabin of a broken ship.The wind roared outside, like a wrecked ship wrecked in a strong wind, and it felt very shaky. In the corner of the room was a long, lame wooden table, on which stood some broken glassware, and some dusty curiosities scavenged from every corner of the world. In another corner of the house is a bar, if that can be called a bar.Rigged planks adorned the place to resemble the head of a right whale.

On the shelves in the whale's mouth, there are all kinds of wine bottles with long necks, short necks, and pot-bellied chests. A little old man who looks like the Hebrew prophet Jonah is busy there. money, sell them trembling drunkenness and death. The most cunning thing is the green wine glass that smells of death. At first glance, it looks like a cylinder, but when it reaches the waist, it cunningly retracts downward.There is also a scale on the body of the cup, and each scale costs a penny, and you can drink a shilling in one sip. A few young sailors were gathering around the dim light, playing chess with whale teeth and shells as pieces.

I found the shop owner and said that I would stay in the shop. He told me it was full and there was no room, but then he said, "You can share a bed with a harpooneer if you want. You're going whaling anyway, so get used to it, okay?" "I've never been in the habit of sharing a bed with anybody else! But if I had to, I'd like to know what kind of man that harpooneer was." Yes, it would be better to sleep in the bed of a well-behaved man than to wander the icy streets again. "Ah, I know you will agree. So, what about dinner? Whether you want to eat dinner or not, I will be ready soon!"

I slumped down in an old-fashioned high-backed chair.The chairs are carved with mess like the chairs in Battery Park. Next to a chair next to it, there is a sailor with a jackknife in his hand who is carving something. Does he want to carve a ship?Look at the strength of his life. After a while, four or five of our group were called to the next room to eat.It was as cold as Iceland in the house, and the boss said he couldn't light a fire. We stretched out our hands shyly, and couldn't wait to hold the hot teacup. Two teardrops of tallow wax swayed in the wind coming in from all directions, shining on everyone's disfigured faces flickering.The food is not bad, there are potatoes, meat, and glutinous rice balls!Ah, eat glutinous rice balls for dinner!

A young coachman in a green coat was eating glutinous rice balls with a ferocious face. "Oh, boy, if you eat like this, you will have nightmares at night." The shop owner said. I asked softly, "Is he the javeliner?" The boss gave me a sneaky look: "No, Javeliner doesn't eat glutinous rice balls, he only eats steak, which is undercooked." "Why the hell isn't he here?" "It'll be here soon," he replied. I drew a portrait of this javeliner in my heart, and suddenly I felt a little worried.Anyway, I won't go to bed until he undresses and goes to bed first.

After dinner, everyone went back to the bar immediately. I saw that there was nowhere to go, so I followed suit. After a while, there was a commotion outside. "O sailor of the Orca!" The boss jumped up suddenly and shouted like this. "They have been away for three years, and they must have returned with a rewarding experience! Well, my friends, this time we have news!" There was a flurry of footsteps at the door, which was the unique sound of sailor boots on the ground.The door opened wide, and a group of sailors crowded in. They were all in rags and patches, with scarves on their heads and ice on their beards, like a pack of bears.

They had just disembarked from the ship, and this was the first house they had entered since land.All headed straight for the bar. Jonah struggled to pour them a glass of wine, and one of them said that he had a cold and could not drink.Jonah immediately poured a glass of gin wine, added some honey, and added something like pitch. He swore that he would drink this glass of wine, whether he had a cold or a cold, whether it was an old disease or a new one. No matter if you got sick on the coast of Labrador or caught a cold in Iceland, drink it, just drink it, and the disease will be cured. After a while, those people started drinking madly, dancing and shouting wildly.

Sailors who have just landed are like this, no matter how much they drink. But I noticed that one of them was quite different from the others.Although he tried not to overwhelm his companions with the seriousness of his face, his demeanor was in stark contrast to that of the other sailors. He was broad-shouldered, six feet high, with a sunburned face, exceptionally white teeth, and a look of melancholy in his eyes. The tall, heavy-set Virginian, with a slightly southern accent, walked away quietly while his fellows were drinking and drinking. When I saw him again, it was already on the boat. His fellows soon found him missing, and called for him by name: "Buckinton! Buckinton!" Several people shouted and ran out of the house to find him. After the carnival, the bar looked very deserted, a little creepy. It was already nine o'clock at night.I'm thinking about sleeping. Probably people are opposed to sharing the bed with irrelevant people by nature, even brothers.To be in bed with a strange javeliner in such a strange place, in a strange inn, was intolerable now. Does being a sailor have to share a bed with someone else?Where is the matter!Sailors sleep in one room on a ship.Everyone has their own bed, their own quilt, even if you lie naked, no one will hinder you. Thinking of this, I can't bear it anymore.This javeliner's clothes must be dirty... "Hey, boss, forget it, I'll just make do on the stool for the night! It's really not a good thing to share a bed with someone else." "Okay. It's just that there's nothing to spread on this stool!" As he spoke, he touched the thick wooden knot on the stool. "However, wait a minute, shell man, there is a plane in my wine cabinet, you can plan it!" While talking, he walked to the edge of the wine cabinet, lowered his head and found the plane, wiped off the dust with a rag, and then walked back to plan the stool vigorously. The shavings flew, and the boss grinned like a gorilla.Soon the planer hit an extremely hard big knot, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't plan it. "Forget it, don't plan it! There is probably nothing in the world that can plan a stool into a soft bed." He smiled again, the same gorilla-mouthed smirk. After clearing away the shavings all over the floor, he went on to do other things.I sat alone and thought about something blankly. It took me a long time to come back to my senses.I measured the stool and found that it wasn't long enough, so adding a chair would do.I looked again and found it was too narrow again.There was another stool in the house, but the heights of the two stools were different, so they couldn't be put together. I moved the stool to the edge of the wall, leaving a gap between it and the wall, so that I could just lie down. Immediately after lying down, I got up again, because a gust of wind rushed into Weiwei like a knife through the crack of the broken window, directly facing my head! Where is he, damned javeliner?Ah, yes!Why can't I occupy that bed first while he doesn't come back?I locked the door and fell into a deep sleep, no matter how hard I knocked, I couldn't wake up! Not a bad idea.However, I'm afraid that the javeliner will punch me in the face when I open the door tomorrow morning! what to do!I have no choice but to sleep with a stranger on a cold night like this?Maybe the harpooneer isn't as bad as I thought!After we met, maybe I wouldn't be so disgusted to share the bed with him! But after waiting and waiting, he didn't come back. "Boss, does the javeliner come back in the middle of the night every day?" "Ah, no, no, no, he is an early bird. He goes to bed early and wakes up early, as always. However, he said he went out to sell things tonight. Who knows why he hasn't come back yet!" After speaking, he laughed like a gorilla again. "What is he going to sell?" "Sell his head." "what?" "head." Hearing the boss answer me like this, I couldn't help feeling angry. "That's enough, don't think I'm some young bud, what nonsense?" "Bullshit? Are you talking about my bullshit or his head bullshit or his bullshit?" "You may not be a young bud, but if you let him know that you say that about him, he will roast you into a dead branch!" The boss used the matchstick as a toothpick and said this while picking his teeth. "Then I'll smash his head!" I was a little out of control. "Okay, it's been smashed!" "What? Smashed? You said it was smashed?" "Yeah, that's probably why he couldn't sell." "Okay, Boss, stop talking nonsense. It only adds to my distaste for my 'bedmate'. You'd better tell me, who the hell is he? A man who sells his head seems to me to be either crazy or stupid, and I cannot bear to sleep with such a man." And I said: "If that's the case, I'm going to sue you, the person who knew who he was and arranged for me to sleep with him!" "Oh, angry boy, no kidding, this javeliner is from Nanyang, his heads are made of spices, he sold only one left, and he will sell it anyway, because Tomorrow is Sunday, and everyone else is going to church, so it would be outrageous for him to sell people's heads on the street. I was the one who stopped him from carrying those heads into the street last Sunday! " "Then, boss, this javeliner must not be a kind person, right?" "Well, he pays the rent on time." "Okay, you don't have to worry, go to bed! That bed is my marriage bed with Sal, and it's okay to roll around on the bed. Later, the four of us, Sham and John, slept on that bed without any problem! " "Once, I had a good dream. I rolled over happily and kicked little Sham down. Sal didn't want that bed no matter what!" "Okay, come on, I'll light a lamp for you." I'm still a little hesitant. The proprietor glanced at the clock on the wall, and suddenly exclaimed: "Ah, it's Sunday now, and I can assure you that he won't come back tonight. He must have broken down somewhere!" "Come on, come with me!" I followed him upstairs and into a cold room.The bed was indeed large enough for four javeliners to sleep side by side. "Okay, you can sleep peacefully." He put the candle on the broken ship's chest that doubled as a table and wash-stand, and turned away. I opened the quilt and looked at it, and it was okay. There was hardly anything else in the room except the bed and the broken chest.Throwing in a corner a sailor's bag, which might have been the harpooneer's trunk; beside it was a bundled hammock, and a crude mantelpiece with a picture of a man hunting whales; A long javelin was the last thing in the house. However, soon I discovered another thing.A blanket like a door curtain.The blanket was trimmed with jingle ornaments and had a hole in the middle.I tried wearing this on and it was wet and heavy. It is hard to imagine that the javeliner would flaunt himself in such a strange dress! I couldn't wait to take off the blanket, and turned my head in desperation, feeling sore and sore. I sat on the bed blankly, imagining the image of this strange-looking javeliner. Taking off his coat, he continued to think. I took off my clothes and thought about it for a while. Feeling a burst of coldness, I came back to my senses.Thinking that he would definitely not come back so late, I stopped thinking about it.Blow out the candles and get under the quilt, resign yourself to fate. The mattress was very hard, and I didn't know whether it was filled with corn cobs or tiles. After turning it over and over, I couldn't find a good place where I wouldn't panic. After finally falling asleep, there was a sound of heavy footsteps.A ray of candlelight moves upstairs! Broke, broke, the Javeliner is back!That lawless head trafficker! But I didn't move, I made up my mind not to greet him unless he spoke to me first. Holding the candle in one hand and his "head" in the other, he came into the room. Instead of looking toward the bed, he put the candle on the floor and reached for his sailor bag. I really want to know what he looks like, but he squatted there and didn't look back for a long time. Finally, he turned his head: a terrible face, black or not, red or not, with plasters on the left and right. This must be the trace left by a fight with someone! When he stood up, I saw clearly that it was not a plaster, but a painted color! what 's wrong?My mind was spinning quickly, and finally I remembered a story I heard before: a white whaler was captured by some local aborigines, tattooed all over his body, it was so ugly. Did the javeliner have a similar experience?However, this is nothing, this does not mean that he is a bad person! But the sun can't tan a white man into a copper color anyway, isn't the place on his face other than those color spots all copper color? He squatted there and fumbled for a long time, and when he stood up, he held an ax pipe and a sealskin wallet in his hand.He threw the two things on the broken chest, and took off his beaver hat. God, there is no grass growing on his head, he is bald!However, in the middle of the top of the head, there is a small bun! It's so scary, if he wasn't standing right in front of the door, I would have jumped out the door. what to do?Jump out of the window, but the window looks nailed shut! I'm not a coward, but this purple monster that sells people's heads is too inexplicable, and the fear caused by ignorance can make people crazy. It's not that I don't talk to him anymore, but that I don't have the courage to talk to him. He didn't notice me at all, he was still undressing, his arms, chest, legs were all exposed, and there was that horrible color patch on his face everywhere.He was like a man who had escaped from the battlefield, his body was covered with scars after a narrow escape. He must be some kind of savage aborigine from Southeast Asia, who boarded a whaling ship and came here! I trembled all over: This head trafficker may be selling the head of his own brother!Then, will he take a fancy to my head? I glanced at the ax-pipe on the cupboard, and almost cried out.He was moving, and I temporarily suppressed some of my fear out of curiosity. He found the blanket dress I was trying on just now, and fumbled out a little human idol from the small pocket on it. The little idol was hunchbacked, like a newborn black doll.This reminds me of the head made of spices, is this baby also made of real dolls? Soon I dispelled my terrible doubts. The little thing was bright in the candlelight, reflecting a kind of luster that only polished wood can have, and it is wooden. That's when the guy went to the fireplace, lifted the cardboard, and put the little idol down the soot-blackened flue. This is his shrine, or church. I squinted and watched his every move. He took a handful of shavings from his blanket pocket, and placed them carefully before his holy image, and placing a piece of broken bread on the shavings, he kindled a fire with a candle. The flames grew from small to large, burning violently.He reached out to get the bread in the fire, stretched and retracted, tried several times, and finally took it out. He quickly tossed the apparently hot piece of bread upside down in both hands, knocked off the ashes and respectfully presented it to the little holy statue. But the little black thing didn't seem to be interested in the hard bread, and didn't move.And he seemed to be used to it, just humming something weird, probably a hymn. As soon as he sang, his face twisted into a very strange appearance. When the sacrament was finally finished, he blew out the fire, took out the little wooden figure, and stuffed it into his pocket, just like a hunter casually throws some small prey into the pannier. Watching him complete this series of weird movements, I know that the next step is that he will go to bed, what can I do?As if I was about to run into a ghost, I have to yell out a word no matter what! In just a split second, he had the ax pipe in his mouth, puffed out a big puff of smoke, and went to put out the light! Ah, the wild man with the ax and pipe is going to bed! I screamed wildly and jumped up. He also roared, and stretched out his hand to touch what I was. I tremblingly said something, and I didn't quite understand what I was talking about.And while talking, he rolled into the corner, trying to avoid him as much as possible. "Tell me, where did you come from? Tell me, I'll kill you if you don't!" He swung his gleaming ax pipe and roared. "Ah, boss! Peter Coffin, boss! Come on! Help!" I screamed desperately. "Who are you, you bastard, watch how I kill you!" He danced his ax-pipe again, flying around with sparks of smoke, and I felt as if his shirt had been set on fire. Thankfully, at that moment, Coffin walked in with a lamp. I was like a man who fell into the water and saw the rescue boat, and rushed towards him desperately. "Oh, don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Queequeg won't hurt you." The boss said with a smile. "Okay, stop your laughing! Why didn't you tell me that the Javeliner was a cannibal native?" "Hey, I thought you understood! Didn't I tell you, he's selling heads in the city!" "Okay, go to sleep, no problem." "Queequeg, we know each other very well, and this man will sleep with you to-night, won't he?" "understood." Queequeg sat down on the bed, smoking his ax-pipe. "You can go to bed." He lit his pipe at me and pushed back a corner of the quilt. His demeanor now seems a bit polite!Even though he has that scary pattern all over his body, it doesn't mean he's a bad guy!I was afraid just now, and he was also afraid of me! Better to sleep with this sane cannibal aborigine than with a filthy Christian. "Boss, please let him put away his pipe, or rather his axe, so I can go to bed. Because I have no fire insurance!" Coffin recounted my words to Queequeg, who immediately complied, and again gestured me to bed, very kindly. "Well, goodbye, Mr. Coffin." I go to bed. Queequeg lay on his side on the edge of the bed, meaning that he would not touch me, and I slept soundly. That night, I slept soundly.