"And they are rather inconvenient for the head."

"If my head can't take care of itself by this time, after all the
knocking about the world it has had," replied the captain, as
unconcernedly as if he had no connection with it, "it's not worth looking
after."

Thus they came into the young fisherman's bedroom, which was as perfectly
neat and clean as the shop and parlour below; though it was but a little
place, with a sliding window, and a phrenological ceiling expressive of
all the peculiarities of the house-roof. Here the captain sat down on
the foot of the bed, and glancing at a dreadful libel on Kitty which
ornamented the wall,--the production of some wandering limner, whom the
captain secretly admired as having studied portraiture from the figure-
heads of ships,--motioned to the young man to take the rush-chair on the
other side of the small round table. That done, the captain put his hand
in the deep breast-pocket of his long-skirted blue coat, and took out of
it a strong square case-bottle,--not a large bottle, but such as may be
seen in any ordinary ship's medicine-chest. Setting this bottle on the
table without removing his hand from it, Captain Jorgan then spake as
follows:--

"In my last voyage homeward-bound," said the captain, "and that's the
voyage off of which I now come straight, I encountered such weather off
the Horn as is not very often met with, even there. I have rounded that
stormy Cape pretty often, and I believe I first beat about there in the
identical storms that blew the Devil's horns and tail off, and led to the
horns being worked up into tooth-picks for the plantation overseers in my
country, who may be seen (if you travel down South, or away West, fur