Call me Ishmael. Years ago, finding myself poor and aimless on land, I decided to sail and view the watery world. This is my method for curing melancholy and regulating my blood. Whenever my mouth grows grim, or my soul feels like a damp, drizzly November, I know it is time to leave. The urge becomes undeniable when I pause before coffin before warehouses, trail behind funerals, or feel a manic impulse to knock hats off in the street. Going to sea is my alternative to suicide. While Cato died on his sword with a flourish, I quietly board a ship. This impulse is not unique; almost all men feel a magnetic pull toward the ocean.
Passing through a low arch, Ishmael entered the public room with its heavy beams and warped planks that made him feel as though he walked the cockpit of some ancient craft. The bar projected from one corner, a crude construction resembling a right whale’s head. The vast arched bone of the jaw stood wide enough to drive a coach beneath, and within this maw bustled a wizened little man the sailors called Jonah, pouring poisons from deceptive glasses that tapered to cheating bottoms.
When Ishmael requested lodging, the landlord delivered unwelcome news: every bed was taken. He must share a blanket with a harpooneer. Ishmael hesitated but agreed, provided the stranger proved decent. Supper offered small comfort—cold food, a colder room, no fire, only two dismal candles. The landlord remarked that the harpooneer ate nothing but rare steaks, a detail that settled into Ishmael’s mind like a splinter. A dark-complexioned man who preferred his meat bloody. He resolved that if they must share a bed, the stranger would undress first.
The evening brought a brief distraction when the crew of the Grampus burst through the door, fresh from a three-year voyage, roaring in like bears from Labrador with ice-crusted beards. Ishmael watched them drink and caper, noting one quiet figure among them—a tall Southerner who stood apart before slipping away into the night. His shipmates called after him—Bulkington!—but he was gone.
When the noise faded, Ishmael’s dread returned. The harpooneer had still not appeared. The landlord responded with maddening riddles about peddling heads: the harpooneer had arrived from the South Seas with embalmed New Zealand heads, curiosities he sold about the town. He had gone out this Saturday night to unload his final specimen before the Sabbath made such business impossible. A man who traded in human heads—this was the creature with whom he must share a bed.
Ishmael tried sleeping on a wooden bench rather than face the harpooneer’s blanket. The landlord planed the boards with ape-like grins while drafts swept from window and door. The bench proved too short, too narrow, too cold. Defeated, Ishmael followed the landlord upstairs to a room containing a bed of prodigious size, a tall harpoon at its head, and a strange shaggy garment on the chest resembling a door mat with a slit in its center. Alone in the freezing chamber, he examined the odd poncho-like object, even trying it on before a scrap of mirror. The sight decided him. He stripped, blew out the candle, and tumbled into the vast bed.
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