第十五章 Chowder.
The chapter follows the narrator and Queequeg as they arrive late in the evening at Nantucket, seeking lodging and a meal. They have been directed to the Try Pots Inn by the landlord of the Spouter-Inn, who praised his cousin Hosea Hussey’s establishment and particularly recommended the house chowders.
Arrival and Directions to the Try Pots Inn
After the Moss anchors, the narrator and Queequeg go ashore too late for any business that day, needing only supper and a bed. Peter Coffin gave them complicated directions involving a yellow warehouse to keep on the starboard hand until they sighted a white church to larboard, then navigating a corner three points to starboard, and finally asking the first person they met. Queequeg disputes the original instructions, insisting the yellow warehouse—their first landmark—should be left on the larboard rather than starboard. The two wander in darkness, occasionally waking locals for directions, until they successfully locate the inn.
Try Pots Inn Sign and Narrator’s Unease
The inn’s sign features two enormous black wooden pots hung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast planted before the doorway. The narrator finds the structure ominously resembling a gallows with two horns, and he cannot help staring with a vague misgiving. His overactive imagination interprets the sign as foreboding death: the two horns seem meant for both him and Queequeg. He reflects on the series of ominous signs encountered since landing at the whaling port—the Coffin who runs his inn, the tombstones at the whalemen’s chapel—and now this gallows-like structure with its black pots, wondering if they hint at damnation.
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