Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

BENITO CERENO 119
antlers, and keeps his fishing-rod, tongs, and walkingstick
in the same corner.
The similitude was heightened, if not originally suggested,
by glimpses of the surrounding sea ; since, in
one aspect, the country and the ocean seem Tjousihs-
german.
"The floor of the cuddy was matted. Overhead, four
or five old muskets were stuck into horizontal holes
along
the beams. On one side was a claw-footed old
table lashed to the deck ; a thumbed missal on it, and
over it a small, meagre
crucifix attached to the bulk-
head. Under the table lay a dented cutlass or two,
with a hacked harpoon, among some melancholy old
rigging, like a heap_of poor friars' girdles. There were
also two long, sharp-ribbed settees of Malacca cane,
black with age, and uncomfortable to look at _as_mquisitors'
racks, with a large, misshapen arm-chair,
which, furnished with a rude barber's crotch at the
back, working with a screw, seemed some grotesque
engine^ of torment. A flag locker was in one corner,
©pen, exposing various coloured bunting, some rolled
up, others half unrolled, still others tumbled. Opposite
was a cumbrous washstand, of black mahogany, all of
one block, with a pedestal, like a font, and over it a
railed shelf, containing combs, brushes, and other implements
of the toilet. A torn hammock of stained grass
the sheets tossed, and the pillow wrinkled
swung near ;
up like a brow, as if whoever slept here slept but illy,
with alternate visitations of sad thoughts and bad
dreams.
The further extremity of the cuddy, overhanging the
ship's stern, was pierced with three openings, windows
or port-holes, according as men or cannon might peer,
socially or unsocially, out of them. At present neither
men nor cannon were seen, though huge ring-bolts and