They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what
to make of this; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me.
I remembered a story of a white man--a whaleman too--
who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them.
I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his
distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure.
And what is it, thought I, after all! It's only his outside;
a man can be honest in any sort of skin. But then, what to make of
his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about,
and completely independent of the squares of tattooing.
To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning;
but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into a
purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South Seas;
and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects
upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing
through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me
at all. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag,
he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort
of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on.
Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room,
he then took the New Zealand head--a ghastly thing enough--
and crammed it down into the bag.
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