The sun was already sinking into the trees when they went with their jingling
dippers into the wooded ravine of Mashkin Upland.
As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and
dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.
The teacher's desk and chair stood on a platform in one corner; there was an uncouth stove, never blackened oftener than once a year, a map of the United States, two blackboards, a ten-quart tin pail of water and long-handled
dipper on a corner shelf, and wooden desks and benches for the scholars, who only numbered twenty in Rebecca's time.
I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took the bucket and gourd; I took a
dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot.
"Scuttle-butt's for'ard, an' the
dipper's alongside.
Only a little while back, when I was riding and suffering, what a heaven this peace, this rest, this sweet serenity in this secluded shady nook by this purling stream would have seemed, where I could keep perfectly comfortable all the time by pouring a
dipper of water into my armor now and then; yet already I was getting dissatisfied; partly be- cause I could not light my pipe -- for, although I had long ago started a match factory, I had forgotten to bring matches with me -- and partly because we had nothing to eat.
"A leetle
dipper," I heard the latter say, "and, perhaps, a few eenches - " but I lost the last epithet.
The walls were black; there was an opening to admit the light above the worm-eaten door; and here and there were a few stools consisting of rough blocks of beech-wood, each set upon three wooden legs; a hutch for bread, a large wooden
dipper, a bucket and some earthen milk-pans, a spinning-wheel on the top of the bread-hutch, and a few wicker mats for draining cheeses.
There was a crowning air upon this closet of closets, of having been for ages hummed through by the Cathedral bell and organ, until those venerable bees had made sublimated honey of everything in store; and it was always observed that every
dipper among the shelves
Then he was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog--to and fro on the floor, up and down, and around in great circles, but his eyes were red and he held on as the body cart-whipped over the floor, upsetting the tin
dipper and the soap dish and the flesh brush, and banged against the tin side of the bath.
In a sky of iron the points of the
Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires.
"I wager my head against a
dipper that you will have opened the door, rescued the girl, and despoiled the chief altar before a single beadle is awake.