Thinks I, I'll wait awhile; he must be dropping in before long.
I'll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may become
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--yea, 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.
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