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 headpeddling 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