Moby Dick Read Online Free Page B

the "Sword-Fish Inn,"
there came such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the
packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the
congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic
pavement,—rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the
flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless service the soles
of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too expensive and
jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare
in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within.
But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don't you hear? get away from
before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I
went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward,
for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.
    Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either
hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a
tomb. At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that
quarter of the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to
a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which
stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant
for the uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was
to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the
flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that
destroyed city, Gomorrah? But "The Crossed Harpoons," and "The
Sword-Fish?"—this, then must needs be the sign of "The Trap."
However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within, pushed
on and opened a second, interior door.
    It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred
black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black
Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church;
and the preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the
weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered
I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of 'The Trap!'
    Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the
docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a
swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly
representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words
underneath—"The Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin."
    Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connexion,
thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I
suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light
looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and
the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have
been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the
swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought
that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea
coffee.
    It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side
palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp
bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse
howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon,
nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with
his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. "In judging of that
tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer—of whose
works I possess the only copy extant—"it maketh a marvellous
difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where
the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from
that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which
the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough, thought I, as
this passage occurred to my mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest
well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the
house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies
though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too
late to make