Starting up,
the landlord cried, "That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported
in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship.
Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees."
A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open,
and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy
watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters,
all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles,
they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just
landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered.
No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's mouth--
the bar--when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating,
soon poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad
cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion
of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all
colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing,
or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side
of an ice-island.
The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally
does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea,
and they began capering about most obstreperously.
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