Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses'
ears, swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front
of an old doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the
other side, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows.
Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the time,
but I could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving.
A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two
remaining horns; yes, two of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me.
It's ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first
whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's chapel,
and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black pots too!
Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching Tophet?
I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled
woman with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch
of the inn, under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much
like an injured eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man
in a purple woollen shirt.
"Get along with ye," said she to the man, "or I'll be combing ye!"
"Come on, Queequeg," said I, "all right. There's Mrs.
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