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