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 color,
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