diff --git a/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/tests/test_capa_module.py b/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/tests/test_capa_module.py
index 73d2eb111f6c80928364c54ad5a1d4074fdb5f69..b7b7d8b6f40b9aaa5c5f9c02c289617153afc19f 100644
--- a/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/tests/test_capa_module.py
+++ b/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/tests/test_capa_module.py
@@ -8,16 +8,21 @@ Tests of the Capa XModule
#pylint: disable=C0302
import datetime
-import unittest
-import random
import json
+import random
+import os
+import textwrap
+import unittest
from mock import Mock, patch
+import webob
from webob.multidict import MultiDict
import xmodule
+from xmodule.tests import DATA_DIR
from capa.responsetypes import (StudentInputError, LoncapaProblemError,
ResponseError)
+from capa.xqueue_interface import XQueueInterface
from xmodule.capa_module import CapaModule, ComplexEncoder
from xmodule.modulestore import Location
from xblock.field_data import DictFieldData
@@ -33,42 +38,47 @@ class CapaFactory(object):
A helper class to create problem modules with various parameters for testing.
"""
- sample_problem_xml = """<?xml version="1.0"?>
-<problem>
- <text>
- <p>What is pi, to two decimal placs?</p>
- </text>
-<numericalresponse answer="3.14">
-<textline math="1" size="30"/>
-</numericalresponse>
-</problem>
-"""
+ sample_problem_xml = textwrap.dedent("""\
+ <?xml version="1.0"?>
+ <problem>
+ <text>
+ <p>What is pi, to two decimal places?</p>
+ </text>
+ <numericalresponse answer="3.14">
+ <textline math="1" size="30"/>
+ </numericalresponse>
+ </problem>
+ """)
num = 0
- @staticmethod
- def next_num():
- CapaFactory.num += 1
- return CapaFactory.num
+ @classmethod
+ def next_num(cls):
+ cls.num += 1
+ return cls.num
- @staticmethod
- def input_key():
+ @classmethod
+ def input_key(cls, input_num=2):
"""
Return the input key to use when passing GET parameters
"""
- return ("input_" + CapaFactory.answer_key())
+ return ("input_" + cls.answer_key(input_num))
- @staticmethod
- def answer_key():
+ @classmethod
+ def answer_key(cls, input_num=2):
"""
Return the key stored in the capa problem answer dict
"""
- return ("-".join(['i4x', 'edX', 'capa_test', 'problem',
- 'SampleProblem%d' % CapaFactory.num]) +
- "_2_1")
+ return (
+ "%s_%d_1" % (
+ "-".join(['i4x', 'edX', 'capa_test', 'problem', 'SampleProblem%d' % cls.num]),
+ input_num,
+ )
+ )
- @staticmethod
- def create(graceperiod=None,
+ @classmethod
+ def create(cls,
+ graceperiod=None,
due=None,
max_attempts=None,
showanswer=None,
@@ -97,8 +107,8 @@ class CapaFactory(object):
attempts: also added to instance state. Will be converted to an int.
"""
location = Location(["i4x", "edX", "capa_test", "problem",
- "SampleProblem{0}".format(CapaFactory.next_num())])
- field_data = {'data': CapaFactory.sample_problem_xml}
+ "SampleProblem{0}".format(cls.next_num())])
+ field_data = {'data': cls.sample_problem_xml}
if graceperiod is not None:
field_data['graceperiod'] = graceperiod
@@ -143,6 +153,47 @@ class CapaFactory(object):
return module
+class CapaFactoryWithFiles(CapaFactory):
+ """
+ A factory for creating a Capa problem with files attached.
+ """
+ sample_problem_xml = textwrap.dedent("""\
+ <problem>
+ <coderesponse queuename="BerkeleyX-cs188x">
+ <!-- actual filenames here don't matter for server-side tests,
+ they are only acted upon in the browser. -->
+ <filesubmission
+ points="25"
+ allowed_files="prog1.py prog2.py prog3.py"
+ required_files="prog1.py prog2.py prog3.py"
+ />
+ <codeparam>
+ <answer_display>
+ If you're having trouble with this Project,
+ please refer to the Lecture Slides and attend office hours.
+ </answer_display>
+ <grader_payload>{"project": "p3"}</grader_payload>
+ </codeparam>
+ </coderesponse>
+
+ <customresponse>
+ <text>
+ If you worked with a partner, enter their username or email address. If you
+ worked alone, enter None.
+ </text>
+
+ <textline points="0" size="40" correct_answer="Your partner's username or 'None'"/>
+ <answer type="loncapa/python">
+correct=['correct']
+s = str(submission[0]).strip()
+if submission[0] == '':
+ correct[0] = 'incorrect'
+ </answer>
+ </customresponse>
+ </problem>
+ """)
+
+
class CapaModuleTest(unittest.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
@@ -490,6 +541,88 @@ class CapaModuleTest(unittest.TestCase):
# Expect that the number of attempts is NOT incremented
self.assertEqual(module.attempts, 1)
+ def test_check_problem_with_files(self):
+ # Check a problem with uploaded files, using the check_problem API.
+ # pylint: disable=W0212
+
+ # The files we'll be uploading.
+ fnames = ["prog1.py", "prog2.py", "prog3.py"]
+ fpaths = [os.path.join(DATA_DIR, "capa", fname) for fname in fnames]
+ fileobjs = [open(fpath) for fpath in fpaths]
+ for fileobj in fileobjs:
+ self.addCleanup(fileobj.close)
+
+ module = CapaFactoryWithFiles.create()
+
+ # Mock the XQueueInterface.
+ xqueue_interface = XQueueInterface("http://example.com/xqueue", Mock())
+ xqueue_interface._http_post = Mock(return_value=(0, "ok"))
+ module.system.xqueue['interface'] = xqueue_interface
+
+ # Create a request dictionary for check_problem.
+ get_request_dict = {
+ CapaFactoryWithFiles.input_key(input_num=2): fileobjs,
+ CapaFactoryWithFiles.input_key(input_num=3): 'None',
+ }
+
+ module.check_problem(get_request_dict)
+
+ # _http_post is called like this:
+ # _http_post(
+ # 'http://example.com/xqueue/xqueue/submit/',
+ # {
+ # 'xqueue_header': '{"lms_key": "df34fb702620d7ae892866ba57572491", "lms_callback_url": "/", "queue_name": "BerkeleyX-cs188x"}',
+ # 'xqueue_body': '{"student_info": "{\\"anonymous_student_id\\": \\"student\\", \\"submission_time\\": \\"20131117183318\\"}", "grader_payload": "{\\"project\\": \\"p3\\"}", "student_response": ""}',
+ # },
+ # files={
+ # path(u'/home/ned/edx/edx-platform/common/test/data/uploads/asset.html'):
+ # <open file u'/home/ned/edx/edx-platform/common/test/data/uploads/asset.html', mode 'r' at 0x49c5f60>,
+ # path(u'/home/ned/edx/edx-platform/common/test/data/uploads/image.jpg'):
+ # <open file u'/home/ned/edx/edx-platform/common/test/data/uploads/image.jpg', mode 'r' at 0x49c56f0>,
+ # path(u'/home/ned/edx/edx-platform/common/test/data/uploads/textbook.pdf'):
+ # <open file u'/home/ned/edx/edx-platform/common/test/data/uploads/textbook.pdf', mode 'r' at 0x49c5a50>,
+ # },
+ # )
+
+ self.assertEqual(xqueue_interface._http_post.call_count, 1)
+ _, kwargs = xqueue_interface._http_post.call_args
+ self.assertItemsEqual(fpaths, kwargs['files'].keys())
+ for fpath, fileobj in kwargs['files'].iteritems():
+ self.assertEqual(fpath, fileobj.name)
+
+ def test_check_problem_with_files_as_xblock(self):
+ # Check a problem with uploaded files, using the XBlock API.
+ # pylint: disable=W0212
+
+ # The files we'll be uploading.
+ fnames = ["prog1.py", "prog2.py", "prog3.py"]
+ fpaths = [os.path.join(DATA_DIR, "capa", fname) for fname in fnames]
+ fileobjs = [open(fpath) for fpath in fpaths]
+ for fileobj in fileobjs:
+ self.addCleanup(fileobj.close)
+
+ module = CapaFactoryWithFiles.create()
+
+ # Mock the XQueueInterface.
+ xqueue_interface = XQueueInterface("http://example.com/xqueue", Mock())
+ xqueue_interface._http_post = Mock(return_value=(0, "ok"))
+ module.system.xqueue['interface'] = xqueue_interface
+
+ # Create a webob Request with the files uploaded.
+ post_data = []
+ for fname, fileobj in zip(fnames, fileobjs):
+ post_data.append((CapaFactoryWithFiles.input_key(input_num=2), (fname, fileobj)))
+ post_data.append((CapaFactoryWithFiles.input_key(input_num=3), 'None'))
+ request = webob.Request.blank("/some/fake/url", POST=post_data, content_type='multipart/form-data')
+
+ module.handle('xmodule_handler', request, 'problem_check')
+
+ self.assertEqual(xqueue_interface._http_post.call_count, 1)
+ _, kwargs = xqueue_interface._http_post.call_args
+ self.assertItemsEqual(fnames, kwargs['files'].keys())
+ for fpath, fileobj in kwargs['files'].iteritems():
+ self.assertEqual(fpath, fileobj.name)
+
def test_check_problem_error(self):
# Try each exception that capa_module should handle
diff --git a/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/tests/test_xblock_wrappers.py b/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/tests/test_xblock_wrappers.py
index 258ee5b03824ad6fdfdd3091c7174ead84768c64..c8ac5fcdd3568a483ac100020d2904fdfb81961c 100644
--- a/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/tests/test_xblock_wrappers.py
+++ b/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/tests/test_xblock_wrappers.py
@@ -257,7 +257,7 @@ class TestXModuleHandler(TestXBlockWrapper):
def setUp(self):
self.module = XModule(descriptor=Mock(), field_data=Mock(), runtime=Mock(), scope_ids=Mock())
self.module.handle_ajax = Mock(return_value='{}')
- self.request = Mock()
+ self.request = webob.Request({})
def test_xmodule_handler_passed_data(self):
self.module.xmodule_handler(self.request)
diff --git a/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/x_module.py b/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/x_module.py
index e644185c8c1be7f989d7415fad9cb9026dfd3546..cd5a5ef3d9018a392ef59fd701eeaea1d4b195ea 100644
--- a/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/x_module.py
+++ b/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/x_module.py
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ from lxml import etree
from collections import namedtuple
from pkg_resources import resource_listdir, resource_string, resource_isdir
from webob import Response
+from webob.multidict import MultiDict
from xmodule.modulestore import Location
from xmodule.modulestore.exceptions import ItemNotFoundError, InsufficientSpecificationError, InvalidLocationError
@@ -406,7 +407,31 @@ class XModule(XModuleMixin, HTMLSnippet, XBlock): # pylint: disable=abstract-me
"""
XBlock handler that wraps `handle_ajax`
"""
- response_data = self.handle_ajax(suffix, request.POST)
+ class FileObjForWebobFiles(object):
+ """
+ Turn Webob cgi.FieldStorage uploaded files into pure file objects.
+
+ Webob represents uploaded files as cgi.FieldStorage objects, which
+ have a .file attribute. We wrap the FieldStorage object, delegating
+ attribute access to the .file attribute. But the files have no
+ name, so we carry the FieldStorage .filename attribute as the .name.
+
+ """
+ def __init__(self, webob_file):
+ self.file = webob_file.file
+ self.name = webob_file.filename
+
+ def __getattr__(self, name):
+ return getattr(self.file, name)
+
+ # WebOb requests have multiple entries for uploaded files. handle_ajax
+ # expects a single entry as a list.
+ request_post = MultiDict(request.POST)
+ for key in set(request.POST.iterkeys()):
+ if hasattr(request.POST[key], "file"):
+ request_post[key] = map(FileObjForWebobFiles, request.POST.getall(key))
+
+ response_data = self.handle_ajax(suffix, request_post)
return Response(response_data, content_type='application/json')
def get_children(self):
diff --git a/common/test/data/capa/prog1.py b/common/test/data/capa/prog1.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..e159991f24892d9de0fa546a65e0c984dbb95884
--- /dev/null
+++ b/common/test/data/capa/prog1.py
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+# prog1
diff --git a/common/test/data/capa/prog2.py b/common/test/data/capa/prog2.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..165743082301c50cb3117c92c51714b555ea072c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/common/test/data/capa/prog2.py
@@ -0,0 +1,1882 @@
+# prog2
+# Make this file long, since that seems to affect how uploaded files are
+# handled in webob or cgi.FieldStorage.
+
+moby_dick_ten_chapters = """
+
+CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
+
+
+Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having
+little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on
+shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of
+the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating
+the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
+whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find
+myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up
+the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get
+such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to
+prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically
+knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea
+as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a
+philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly
+take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew
+it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very
+nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
+
+There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
+wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with
+her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
+downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
+cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.
+Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
+
+Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears
+Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What
+do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand
+thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some
+leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some
+looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the
+rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these
+are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to
+counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are
+the green fields gone? What do they here?
+
+But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and
+seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the
+extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder
+warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water
+as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--miles of
+them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets
+and avenues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite.
+Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all
+those ships attract them thither?
+
+Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take
+almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a
+dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic
+in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest
+reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will
+infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.
+Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this
+experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical
+professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for
+ever.
+
+But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,
+quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of
+the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees,
+each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and
+here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder
+cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a
+mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their
+hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though
+this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's
+head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the
+magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores
+on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the
+one charm wanting?--Water--there is not a drop of water there! Were
+Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to
+see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two
+handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly
+needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why
+is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at
+some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a
+passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first
+told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the
+old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate
+deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning.
+And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because
+he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain,
+plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see
+in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of
+life; and this is the key to it all.
+
+Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin
+to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs,
+I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger.
+For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is
+but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get
+sea-sick--grow quarrelsome--don't sleep of nights--do not enjoy
+themselves much, as a general thing;--no, I never go as a passenger;
+nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a
+Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction
+of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all
+honourable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind
+whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself,
+without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.
+And as for going as cook,--though I confess there is considerable glory
+in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board--yet, somehow,
+I never fancied broiling fowls;--though once broiled, judiciously
+buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who
+will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled
+fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old
+Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the
+mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.
+
+No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
+plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
+True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
+spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort
+of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour,
+particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
+Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all,
+if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
+lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand
+in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
+schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and
+the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in
+time.
+
+What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
+and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
+I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
+Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
+respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain't
+a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
+order me about--however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
+satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
+one way or other served in much the same way--either in a physical
+or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
+passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and
+be content.
+
+Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
+paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
+penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
+pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying
+and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
+infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But BEING
+PAID,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
+receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
+believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account
+can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves
+to perdition!
+
+Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
+exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,
+head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is,
+if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
+Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from
+the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not
+so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many
+other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it.
+But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
+merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling
+voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the
+constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me
+in some unaccountable way--he can better answer than any one else. And,
+doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand
+programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as
+a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances.
+I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
+
+
+"GRAND CONTESTED ELECTION FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES.
+
+"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.
+
+"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."
+
+
+Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the
+Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others
+were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and
+easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces--though
+I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
+circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives
+which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced
+me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the
+delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill
+and discriminating judgment.
+
+Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
+whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my
+curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
+bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all
+the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped
+to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not
+have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting
+itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on
+barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a
+horror, and could still be social with it--would they let me--since it
+is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place
+one lodges in.
+
+By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
+great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
+conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into
+my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them
+all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
+
+
+I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm,
+and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of
+old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night in
+December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet
+for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that place
+would offer, till the following Monday.
+
+As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at
+this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well
+be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was
+made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a
+fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous
+old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has
+of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though
+in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket
+was her great original--the Tyre of this Carthage;--the place where the
+first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket
+did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to
+give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that
+first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
+cobblestones--so goes the story--to throw at the whales, in order to
+discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?
+
+Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me
+in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a
+matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a
+very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold
+and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had
+sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,--So,
+wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of
+a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the
+north with the darkness towards the south--wherever in your wisdom you
+may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire
+the price, and don't be too particular.
+
+With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of "The
+Crossed Harpoons"--but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further
+on, from the bright red windows of 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 any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone
+is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus
+there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and
+shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears
+with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not
+keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his
+red silken wrapper--(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What
+a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them
+talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give
+me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
+
+But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up
+to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra
+than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the
+line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in
+order to keep out this frost?
+
+Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the
+door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be
+moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a
+Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a
+temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.
+
+But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is
+plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet,
+and see what sort of a place this "Spouter" may be.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.
+
+
+Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,
+low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of
+the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large
+oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the
+unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent
+study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of
+the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its
+purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first
+you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New
+England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint
+of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and
+especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the
+entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however
+wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.
+
+But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous,
+black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three
+blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy,
+soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted.
+Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable
+sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily
+took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting
+meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you
+through.--It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.--It's the unnatural
+combat of the four primal elements.--It's a blasted heath.--It's a
+Hyperborean winter scene.--It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream
+of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous
+something in the picture's midst. THAT once found out, and all the rest
+were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic
+fish? even the great leviathan himself?
+
+In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own,
+partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom
+I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a
+great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three
+dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to
+spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself
+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 were summoned to our meal in an
+adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland--no fire at all--the landlord
+said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each
+in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and
+hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But
+the fare was of the most substantial kind--not only meat and potatoes,
+but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in
+a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful
+manner.
+
+"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
+him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner,
+and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall
+mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry
+of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away
+unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the
+sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and
+being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised
+a cry of "Bulkington! Bulkington! where's Bulkington?" and darted out of
+the house in pursuit of him.
+
+It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost
+supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself
+upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance
+of the seamen.
+
+No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal
+rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but
+people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to
+sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange
+town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely
+multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should
+sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep
+two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they
+all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and
+cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.
+
+The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the
+thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a
+harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of
+the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over.
+Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be
+home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at
+midnight--how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?
+
+"Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.--I shan't sleep
+with him. I'll try the bench here."
+
+"Just as you please; I'm sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a
+mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here"--feeling of the knots and
+notches. "But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's plane
+there in the bar--wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug enough." So saying
+he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting
+the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning
+like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the
+plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was
+near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit--the
+bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing
+in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the
+shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in
+the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a
+brown study.
+
+I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too
+short; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too
+narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher
+than the planed one--so there was no yoking them. I then placed the
+first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall,
+leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I
+soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me from under
+the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all, especially
+as another current from the rickety door met the one from the window,
+and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate
+vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night.
+
+The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I steal
+a march on him--bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be
+wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon
+second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next
+morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be
+standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down!
+
+Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending
+a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I began to think
+that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against
+this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I'll wait awhile; he must be dropping
+in before long. I'll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may
+become jolly good bedfellows after all--there's no telling.
+
+But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes,
+and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.
+
+"Landlord!" said I, "what sort of a chap is he--does he always keep such
+late hours?" It was now hard upon twelve o'clock.
+
+The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to
+be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. "No," he
+answered, "generally he's an early bird--airley to bed and airley to
+rise--yes, he's the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out
+a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late,
+unless, may be, he can't sell his head."
+
+"Can't sell his head?--What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you
+are telling me?" getting into a towering rage. "Do you pretend to say,
+landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday
+night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?"
+
+"That's precisely it," said the landlord, "and I told him he couldn't
+sell it here, the market's overstocked."
+
+"With what?" shouted I.
+
+"With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?"
+
+"I tell you what it is, landlord," said I quite calmly, "you'd better
+stop spinning that yarn to me--I'm not green."
+
+"May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, "but I
+rayther guess you'll be done BROWN if that ere harpooneer hears you a
+slanderin' his head."
+
+"I'll break it for him," said I, now flying into a passion again at this
+unaccountable farrago of the landlord's.
+
+"It's broke a'ready," said he.
+
+"Broke," said I--"BROKE, do you mean?"
+
+"Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess."
+
+"Landlord," said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a
+snow-storm--"landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one
+another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a
+bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half
+belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I
+have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and
+exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling
+towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow--a sort of connexion,
+landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest
+degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this
+harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the
+night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay
+that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good
+evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping
+with a madman; and you, sir, YOU I mean, landlord, YOU, sir, by trying
+to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to
+a criminal prosecution."
+
+"Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath, "that's a purty long
+sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy,
+this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from
+the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads
+(great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one
+he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not
+do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to
+churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was
+goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the
+airth like a string of inions."
+
+This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed
+that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me--but at
+the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a
+Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal
+business as selling the heads of dead idolators?
+
+"Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man."
+
+"He pays reg'lar," was the rejoinder. "But come, it's getting dreadful
+late, you had better be turning flukes--it's a nice bed; Sal and me
+slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There's plenty of room
+for two to kick about in that bed; it's an almighty big bed that. Why,
+afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the
+foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and
+somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm.
+Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here, I'll give ye a
+glim in a jiffy;" and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards
+me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a
+clock in the corner, he exclaimed "I vum it's Sunday--you won't see that
+harpooneer to-night; he's come to anchor somewhere--come along then; DO
+come; WON'T ye come?"
+
+I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was
+ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough,
+with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers
+to sleep abreast.
+
+"There," said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest
+that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; "there, make
+yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye." I turned round from
+eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.
+
+Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of the
+most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced
+round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see
+no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four
+walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of
+things not properly belonging to the room, there was a hammock lashed
+up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner; also a large seaman's bag,
+containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk.
+Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf
+over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed.
+
+But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the
+light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive
+at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to
+nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little
+tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an
+Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat,
+as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible
+that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and parade the
+streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on, to try
+it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and
+thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer
+had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass
+stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore
+myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck.
+
+I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this
+head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on
+the bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in
+the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought
+a little more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now,
+half undressed as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about
+the harpooneer's not coming home at all that night, it being so very
+late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and
+then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the
+care of heaven.
+
+Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery,
+there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep
+for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty
+nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy
+footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room
+from under the door.
+
+Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal
+head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word
+till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New
+Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without
+looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the
+floor in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted cords
+of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I was all
+eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while
+employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This accomplished, however, he
+turned round--when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of
+a dark, purplish, yellow colour, here and there stuck over with large
+blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a terrible
+bedfellow; he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is,
+just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his face
+so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not be
+sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were
+stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this;
+but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of
+a white man--a whaleman too--who, falling among the cannibals, had been
+tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his
+distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And what is it,
+thought I, after all! It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any
+sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that
+part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of the
+squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of
+tropical tanning; but 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 Seas;
+and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the
+skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning,
+this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty
+having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled
+out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing
+these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New
+Zealand head--a ghastly thing enough--and crammed it down into the bag.
+He now took off his hat--a new beaver hat--when I came nigh singing out
+with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head--none to speak of at
+least--nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His
+bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull.
+Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted
+out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.
+
+Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but
+it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of
+this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.
+Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and
+confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him
+as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken 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 address him, and demand a satisfactory answer
+concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.
+
+Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed
+his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered
+with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same
+dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just
+escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very
+legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up
+the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some
+abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South
+Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it.
+A peddler of heads too--perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might
+take a fancy to mine--heavens! look at that tomahawk!
+
+But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about
+something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that
+he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or
+dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the
+pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with
+a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days' old Congo
+baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that
+this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But
+seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal
+like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden
+idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the
+empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this
+little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The
+chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I
+thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel
+for his Congo idol.
+
+I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but
+ill at ease meantime--to see what was next to follow. First he takes
+about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places
+them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on
+top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into
+a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire,
+and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be
+scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit;
+then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of
+it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such
+dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange
+antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the
+devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some
+pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the
+most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol
+up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as
+carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.
+
+All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and
+seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business
+operations, and jumping into bed 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 so long been bound.
+
+But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.
+Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an
+instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle,
+he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light
+was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth,
+sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving
+a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.
+
+Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him
+against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might
+be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his
+guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my
+meaning.
+
+"Who-e debel you?"--he at last said--"you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e."
+And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the
+dark.
+
+"Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord! Watch!
+Coffin! Angels! save me!"
+
+"Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the
+cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the
+hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire.
+But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light
+in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.
+
+"Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here wouldn't
+harm a hair of your head."
+
+"Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell me that that
+infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?"
+
+"I thought ye know'd it;--didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads
+around town?--but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look
+here--you sabbee me, I sabbee--you this man sleepe you--you sabbee?"
+
+"Me sabbee plenty"--grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and
+sitting up in bed.
+
+"You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and
+throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil
+but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment.
+For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking
+cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to
+myself--the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason
+to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober
+cannibal than a drunken Christian.
+
+"Landlord," said I, "tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or
+whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will
+turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me.
+It's dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured."
+
+This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely
+motioned me to get into bed--rolling over to one side as much as to
+say--"I won't touch a leg of ye."
+
+"Good night, landlord," said I, "you may go."
+
+I turned in, and never slept better in my life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.
+
+
+Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown
+over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost
+thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of
+odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his
+tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure,
+no two parts of which were of one precise shade--owing I suppose to
+his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt
+sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times--this same arm of his, I
+say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt.
+Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could
+hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and
+it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that
+Queequeg was hugging me.
+
+My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a
+child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me;
+whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle.
+The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other--I
+think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little
+sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other,
+was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,--my
+mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to
+bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st June,
+the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But
+there was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the
+third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time,
+and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.
+
+I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse
+before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the
+small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the
+sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the
+streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse
+and worse--at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my
+stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself
+at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good
+slippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but condemning me to lie
+abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most
+conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For
+several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I
+have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At
+last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly
+waking from it--half steeped in dreams--I opened my eyes, and the before
+sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock
+running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was
+to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung
+over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form
+or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my
+bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with
+the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking
+that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be
+broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me;
+but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for
+days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding
+attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle
+myself with it.
+
+Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the
+supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to
+those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg's pagan
+arm thrown round me. But at length all the past night's events soberly
+recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to
+the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm--unlock his
+bridegroom clasp--yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly,
+as though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse
+him--"Queequeg!"--but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over,
+my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a
+slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk
+sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A
+pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the
+broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! "Queequeg!--in the name of
+goodness, Queequeg, wake!" At length, by dint of much wriggling, and
+loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his
+hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in
+extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself
+all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed,
+stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he
+did not altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim
+consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over
+him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings
+now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a creature. When, at
+last, his mind seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow,
+and he became, as it were, reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon
+the floor, and by certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that,
+if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me to dress
+afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg,
+under the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the
+truth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what
+you will; it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this
+particular compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much
+civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness;
+staring at him from the bed, and watching all his toilette motions; for
+the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding. Nevertheless,
+a man like Queequeg you don't see every day, he and his ways were well
+worth unusual regarding.
+
+He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall one,
+by the by, and then--still minus his trowsers--he hunted up his boots.
+What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next
+movement was to crush himself--boots in hand, and hat on--under the bed;
+when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was
+hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I ever
+heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his
+boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition
+stage--neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized
+to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His
+education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not
+been a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled
+himself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage,
+he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. At
+last, he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over his
+eyes, and began creaking and limping about the room, as if, not
+being much accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide
+ones--probably not made to order either--rather pinched and tormented
+him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning.
+
+Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the
+street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view
+into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that
+Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on;
+I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat,
+and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He
+complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the
+morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg, to
+my amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his
+chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a
+piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water
+and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept
+his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed corner,
+slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little
+on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall,
+begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks
+I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers's best cutlery with a vengeance.
+Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came to know of
+what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp
+the long straight edges are always kept.
+
+The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of
+the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his
+harpoon like a marshal's baton.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5. Breakfast.
+
+
+I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the
+grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him,
+though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my
+bedfellow.
+
+However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a
+good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own
+proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be
+backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in
+that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him,
+be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
+
+The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the
+night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were
+nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and
+sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers,
+and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an
+unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.
+
+You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This
+young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and
+would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days
+landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades
+lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the
+complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly bleached
+withal; HE doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could show
+a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed like the
+Andes' western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates,
+zone by zone.
+
+"Grub, ho!" now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went
+to breakfast.
+
+They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease
+in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though: Ledyard,
+the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all
+men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the
+mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or
+the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart
+of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's performances--this kind of
+travel, I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social
+polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had
+anywhere.
+
+These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that
+after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some
+good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every
+man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked
+embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the
+slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas--entire
+strangers to them--and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here
+they sat at a social breakfast table--all of the same calling, all of
+kindred tastes--looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they
+had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains.
+A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen!
+
+But as for Queequeg--why, Queequeg sat there among them--at the head of
+the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot
+say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially
+justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it
+there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the imminent
+jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him. But
+THAT was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows that in
+most people's estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.
+
+We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here; how he eschewed
+coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks,
+done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the
+rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting
+there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I
+sallied out for a stroll.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6. The Street.
+
+
+If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish
+an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a
+civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first
+daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.
+
+In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will
+frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign
+parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners
+will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not
+unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live
+Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water
+Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors;
+but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners;
+savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It
+makes a stranger stare.
+
+But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians,
+and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft
+which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still
+more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this town
+scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain
+and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames;
+fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch
+the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence they
+came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old. Look
+there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and
+swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here
+comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak.
+
+No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one--I mean a
+downright bumpkin dandy--a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his
+two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a
+country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished
+reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the
+comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his
+sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his
+canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps
+in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and
+all, down the throat of the tempest.
+
+But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and
+bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer
+place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this
+day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador.
+As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they
+look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live
+in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough: but not like
+Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with
+milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in
+spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like
+houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came
+they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country?
+
+Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty
+mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses
+and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.
+One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom
+of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?
+
+In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their
+daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece.
+You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say,
+they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly
+burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.
+
+In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples--long
+avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and
+bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their
+tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art;
+which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces
+of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation's final
+day.
+
+And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But
+roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks
+is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that
+bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young
+girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off
+shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of
+the Puritanic sands.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7. The Chapel.
+
+
+In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few are
+the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who
+fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.
+
+Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this
+special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving
+sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called
+bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I
+found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and
+widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks
+of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from
+the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The
+chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and
+women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders,
+masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran
+something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote:--
+
+SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen, was
+lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, November
+1st, 1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER.
+
+SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN,
+WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats'
+crews OF THE SHIP ELIZA Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the
+Off-shore Ground in the PACIFIC, December 31st, 1839. THIS MARBLE Is
+here placed by their surviving SHIPMATES.
+
+SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows
+of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, AUGUST
+3d, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW.
+
+Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself
+near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near
+me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze
+of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only
+person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the only
+one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid
+inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen
+whose names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not;
+but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly
+did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings
+of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were
+assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak
+tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.
+
+Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among
+flowers can say--here, HERE lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation
+that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those
+black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those
+immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in
+the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to
+the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might
+those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.
+
+In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included;
+why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no
+tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is
+that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix
+so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if
+he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the
+Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what
+eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies
+antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we
+still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are
+dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all
+the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a
+whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.
+
+But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these
+dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
+
+It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a
+Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky
+light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen
+who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But
+somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine
+chance for promotion, it seems--aye, a stove boat will make me an
+immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling--a
+speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what
+then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.
+Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true
+substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too
+much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that
+thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my
+better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not
+me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and
+stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit.
+
+
+I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable
+robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon
+admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation,
+sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it
+was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he
+was a very great favourite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his
+youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry.
+At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a
+healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second
+flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone
+certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom--the spring verdure
+peeping forth even beneath February's snow. No one having previously
+heard his history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without
+the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical
+peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life
+he had led. When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and
+certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down
+with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to
+drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed.
+However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed, and hung up
+in a little space in an adjacent corner; when, arrayed in a decent suit,
+he quietly approached the pulpit.
+
+Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a
+regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor,
+seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect,
+it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the
+pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like
+those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling
+captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted
+man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and
+stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance, considering what
+manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for
+an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the
+ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards,
+and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand
+over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel.
+
+The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with
+swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood,
+so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the
+pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship,
+these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not
+prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn
+round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder
+step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him
+impregnable in his little Quebec.
+
+I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.
+Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity,
+that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks
+of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this
+thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be,
+then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual
+withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions?
+Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the word, to the faithful
+man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing stronghold--a lofty
+Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water within the walls.
+
+But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,
+borrowed from the chaplain's former sea-farings. Between the marble
+cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back
+was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating
+against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy
+breakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there
+floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel's
+face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the
+ship's tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into
+the Victory's plank where Nelson fell. "Ah, noble ship," the angel
+seemed to say, "beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy
+helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling
+off--serenest azure is at hand."
+
+Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that
+had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in
+the likeness of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a
+projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship's fiddle-headed
+beak.
+
+What could be more full of meaning?--for the pulpit is ever this earth's
+foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the
+world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first
+descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is
+the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds.
+Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete;
+and the pulpit is its prow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 9. The Sermon.
+
+
+Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered
+the scattered people to condense. "Starboard gangway, there! side away
+to larboard--larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!"
+
+There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a
+still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and
+every eye on the preacher.
+
+He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large
+brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered
+a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the
+bottom of the sea.
+
+This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of
+a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog--in such tones he
+commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards
+the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy--
+
+ "The ribs and terrors in the whale,
+ Arched over me a dismal gloom,
+ While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by,
+ And lift me deepening down to doom.
+
+ "I saw the opening maw of hell,
+ With endless pains and sorrows there;
+ Which none but they that feel can tell--
+ Oh, I was plunging to despair.
+
+ "In black distress, I called my God,
+ When I could scarce believe him mine,
+ He bowed his ear to my complaints--
+ No more the whale did me confine.
+
+ "With speed he flew to my relief,
+ As on a radiant dolphin borne;
+ Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
+ The face of my Deliverer God.
+
+ "My song for ever shall record
+ That terrible, that joyful hour;
+ I give the glory to my God,
+ His all the mercy and the power."
+
+
+Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the
+howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned
+over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon
+the proper page, said: "Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the
+first chapter of Jonah--'And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up
+Jonah.'"
+
+"Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters--four yarns--is one
+of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what
+depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine sound! what a pregnant
+lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the
+fish's belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods
+surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters;
+sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us! But WHAT is this
+lesson that the book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded
+lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot
+of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us all, because it
+is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the
+swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and
+joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of
+Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God--never
+mind now what that command was, or how conveyed--which he found a hard
+command. But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to
+do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to
+persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in
+this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.
+
+"With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at
+God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men will
+carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains
+of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship
+that's bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded
+meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have been no other city
+than the modern Cadiz. That's the opinion of learned men. And where is
+Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa,
+as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the
+Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa,
+shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean, the
+Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the
+westward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye
+not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God?
+Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with
+slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the
+shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered,
+self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in those
+days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested
+ere he touched a deck. How plainly he's a fugitive! no baggage, not a
+hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,--no friends accompany him to the wharf
+with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the
+Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps on
+board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment
+desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger's evil eye.
+Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence;
+in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure
+the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but still serious
+way, one whispers to the other--"Jack, he's robbed a widow;" or, "Joe,
+do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry lad, I guess he's the
+adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing
+murderers from Sodom." Another runs to read the bill that's stuck
+against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored, offering
+five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide, and
+containing a description of his person. He reads, and looks from Jonah
+to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah,
+prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and
+summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a
+coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that itself is strong
+suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him
+not to be the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends
+into the cabin.
+
+"'Who's there?' cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making
+out his papers for the Customs--'Who's there?' Oh! how that harmless
+question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again.
+But he rallies. 'I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon
+sail ye, sir?' Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah,
+though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that
+hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. 'We sail with the
+next coming tide,' at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing
+him. 'No sooner, sir?'--'Soon enough for any honest man that goes a
+passenger.' Ha! Jonah, that's another stab. But he swiftly calls away
+the Captain from that scent. 'I'll sail with ye,'--he says,--'the
+passage money how much is that?--I'll pay now.' For it is particularly
+written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this
+history, 'that he paid the fare thereof' ere the craft did sail. And
+taken with the context, this is full of meaning.
+
+"Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime
+in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In this
+world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without
+a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
+So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah's purse, ere he
+judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it's assented
+to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same
+time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when
+Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still molest the
+Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any
+way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his passage. 'Point out my
+state-room, Sir,' says Jonah now, 'I'm travel-weary; I need sleep.'
+'Thou lookest like it,' says the Captain, 'there's thy room.' Jonah
+enters, and would lock the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing
+him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and
+mutters something about the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed
+to be locked within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws
+himself into his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost
+resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in
+that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah
+feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale
+shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.
+
+"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly
+oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf
+with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all,
+though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with
+reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it
+but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp
+alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes
+roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no
+refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more
+and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.
+'Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!' he groans, 'straight upwards, so it
+burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!'
+
+"Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still
+reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the
+Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as
+one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish,
+praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid
+the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the
+man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught
+to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's prodigy
+of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep.
+
+"And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and
+from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening,
+glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded
+smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not
+bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to
+break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her;
+when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard; when the wind
+is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with
+trampling feet right over Jonah's head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah
+sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and raging sea, feels not
+the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the
+mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after
+him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship--a
+berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep. But the
+frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead ear, 'What
+meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!' Startled from his lethargy by that
+direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the deck,
+grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is
+sprung upon by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after
+wave thus leaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring
+fore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat.
+And ever, as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep
+gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing
+bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the
+tormented deep.
+
+"Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his cringing
+attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark
+him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last,
+fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven,
+they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was
+upon them. The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how furiously they
+mob him with their questions. 'What is thine occupation? Whence comest
+thou? Thy country? What people? But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior
+of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where
+from; whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions,
+but likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the
+unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is
+upon him.
+
+"'I am a Hebrew,' he cries--and then--'I fear the Lord the God of Heaven
+who hath made the sea and the dry land!' Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well
+mightest thou fear the Lord God THEN! Straightway, he now goes on to
+make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more
+appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating
+God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of his
+deserts,--when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him
+forth into the sea, for he knew that for HIS sake this great tempest
+was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other means to
+save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder;
+then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the other they not
+unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.
+
+"And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea;
+when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea
+is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth
+water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless
+commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into
+the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory
+teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto
+the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and learn a
+weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for
+direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He
+leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that
+spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy
+temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not
+clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to
+God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of
+him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before
+you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a model
+for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like
+Jonah."
+
+While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking,
+slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who,
+when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself.
+His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the
+warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off his
+swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple
+hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them.
+
+There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves
+of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with closed
+eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.
+
+But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head lowly,
+with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these
+words:
+
+"Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press
+upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that
+Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me,
+for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down
+from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and
+listen as you listen, while some one of you reads ME that other and more
+awful lesson which Jonah teaches to ME, as a pilot of the living God.
+How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and
+bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a
+wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled
+from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking
+ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we
+have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to
+living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along 'into the
+midst of the seas,' where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand
+fathoms down, and 'the weeds were wrapped about his head,' and all the
+watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of
+any plummet--'out of the belly of hell'--when the whale grounded upon
+the ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting
+prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the
+shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching
+up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and
+earth; and 'vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;' when the word of the
+Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten--his ears, like
+two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean--Jonah
+did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the
+Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!
+
+"This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of
+the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from
+Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God
+has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than
+to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe
+to him who, in this world, courts not dishonour! Woe to him who would
+not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him
+who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is
+himself a castaway!"
+
+He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his
+face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with
+a heavenly enthusiasm,--"But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of
+every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight,
+than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than
+the kelson is low? Delight is to him--a far, far upward, and inward
+delight--who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever
+stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong
+arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has
+gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the
+truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out
+from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,--top-gallant
+delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his
+God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the
+waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake
+from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness
+will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final
+breath--O Father!--chiefly known to me by Thy rod--mortal or immortal,
+here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or
+mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man
+that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"
+
+He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with
+his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed,
+and he was left alone in the place.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend.
+
+
+Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there
+quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time.
+He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove
+hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little
+negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife
+gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his
+heathenish way.
+
+But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going
+to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap
+began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth
+page--as I fancied--stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and
+giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He
+would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number
+one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was
+only by such a large number of fifties being found together, that his
+astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.
+
+With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and
+hideously marred about the face--at least to my taste--his countenance
+yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot
+hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw
+the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes,
+fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a
+thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing
+about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim.
+He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor.
+Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn
+out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it
+otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was
+his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous,
+but it reminded me of General Washington's head, as seen in the popular
+busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope
+from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two
+long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington
+cannibalistically developed.
+
+Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be
+looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence,
+never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared
+wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book.
+Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night
+previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found
+thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference
+of his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not
+know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm
+self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed
+also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the
+other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have
+no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck
+me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something
+almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from
+home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is--which was the only way he could
+get there--thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in
+the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving
+the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to
+himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he
+had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be
+true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or
+so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself
+out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he
+must have "broken his digester."
+
+As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that
+mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then
+only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering
+round the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain;
+the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of
+strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart
+and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing
+savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a
+nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits.
+Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself
+mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have
+repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I'll
+try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but
+hollow courtesy. I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs
+and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little
+noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last
+night's hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be
+bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps
+a little complimented.
+
+We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to
+him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures
+that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we went
+to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen
+in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke; and, producing
+his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat
+exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly
+passing between us.
+
+If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan's
+breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left
+us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as
+I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against
+mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were
+married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends;
+he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this
+sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing
+to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would
+not apply.
+
+After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room
+together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his
+enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out
+some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and
+mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them
+towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he
+silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers' pockets. I let them stay.
+He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed
+the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed
+anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I
+deliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or
+otherwise.
+
+I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
+Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in
+worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do
+you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and
+earth--pagans and all included--can possibly be jealous of an
+insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?--to do
+the will of God--THAT is worship. And what is the will of God?--to do to
+my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me--THAT is the
+will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that
+this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular
+Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him
+in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped
+prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with
+Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that
+done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences
+and all the world. But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.
+
+How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential
+disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very
+bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie
+and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts'
+honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg--a cosy, loving pair.
+"""
diff --git a/common/test/data/capa/prog3.py b/common/test/data/capa/prog3.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..f18d3ff7f267a313eb0d928e66c637d0205de509
--- /dev/null
+++ b/common/test/data/capa/prog3.py
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+# prog3
diff --git a/requirements/edx/github.txt b/requirements/edx/github.txt
index cf2c52832321a642597ec20e3b31ced293a55ae9..26d12f2af93f73ca470d6497c520ca03e32ba300 100644
--- a/requirements/edx/github.txt
+++ b/requirements/edx/github.txt
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
-e git+https://github.com/eventbrite/zendesk.git@d53fe0e81b623f084e91776bcf6369f8b7b63879#egg=zendesk
# Our libraries:
--e git+https://github.com/edx/XBlock.git@2daa4e54#egg=XBlock
+-e git+https://github.com/edx/XBlock.git@d6d2fc91#egg=XBlock
-e git+https://github.com/edx/codejail.git@0a1b468#egg=codejail
-e git+https://github.com/edx/diff-cover.git@v0.2.6#egg=diff_cover
-e git+https://github.com/edx/js-test-tool.git@v0.1.4#egg=js_test_tool