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jolly good bedfellows after
all—there's no telling.
    But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and
threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.
    "Landlord! said I, "what sort of a chap is he—does he always keep
such late hours?" It was now hard upon twelve o'clock.
    The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be
mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. "No," he
answered, "generally he's an early bird—airley to bed and airley to
rise—yes, he's the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he
went out a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him
so late, unless, may be, he can't sell his head."
    "Can't sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you
are telling me?" getting into a towering rage. "Do you pretend to
say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed
Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around
this town?"
    "That's precisely it," said the landlord, "and I told him he couldn't
sell it here, the market's overstocked."
    "With what?" shouted I.
    "With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?"
    "I tell you what it is, landlord," said I quite calmly, "you'd better
stop spinning that yarn to me—I'm not green."
    "May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, "but I
rayther guess you'll be done BROWN if that ere harpooneer hears you a
slanderin' his head."
    "I'll break it for him," said I, now flying into a passion again at
this unaccountable farrago of the landlord's.
    "It's broke a'ready," said he.
    "Broke," said I—"BROKE, do you mean?"
    "Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess."
    "Landlord," said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a
snow-storm—"landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one
another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a
bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half
belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I
have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and
exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling
towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow—a sort of
connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the
highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and
what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe
to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will be so
good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I
take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've
no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, YOU I mean,
landlord, YOU, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would
thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution."
    "Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath, "that's a purty
long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy,
be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just
arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New
Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but
one, and that one he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's
Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' human heads about the
streets when folks is goin' to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday,
but I stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door with four
heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions."
    This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and
showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling
me—but at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who
stayed out of a Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged
in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolators?
    "Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man."
    "He pays reg'lar," was the rejoinder. "But come, it's getting
dreadful late,