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23 April 2018

Tenseisha wa Cheat o Nozomanai. Volume 2 - Chapter 6 Part 1

Translator Corner
Minasan oideyasu. This is Yukkuri demasu!

Chapter 6.

DISCLAIMER: There is no guarantee that my translation is 100% correct. Please correct me if I was wrong.

Author:
Natsuki Aoi ε₯ˆζœˆθ‘΅
Translator:
Yukkuri Oniisan
Editor:
ONLINE GRAMMAR EDITOR

Volume 2
Chapter 6 Part 1


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“Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't—he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes 'em rare.”

“The devil he does,” says I. “Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?”

“He'll be here afore long,” was the answer.

I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this “dark complexioned” harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did.

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on.

Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried, “That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees.”

A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's mouth—the bar—when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of an ice-island.

The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously.

I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a cry of “Bulkington! Bulkington! where's Bulkington?” and darted out of the house in pursuit of him.

It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen.

No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.

The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight—how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?

“Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.—I shan't sleep with him. I'll try the bench here.”

“Just as you please; I'm sorry I can't spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here”—feeling of the knots and notches. “But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's plane there in the bar—wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug enough.” So saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit—the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study.

I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too short; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one—so there was no yoking them. I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all, especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from the window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night.

The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I steal a march on him—bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down!

Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I began to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I'll wait awhile; he must be dropping in before long. I'll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after all—there's no telling.

But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.

“Landlord!” said I, “what sort of a chap is he—does he always keep such late hours?” It was now hard upon twelve o'clock.

The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. “No,” he answered, “generally he's an early bird—airley to bed and airley to rise—yes, he's the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can't sell his head.”

“Can't sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?” getting into a towering rage. “Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?”

“That's precisely it,” said the landlord, “and I told him he couldn't sell it here, the market's overstocked.”

“With what?” shouted I.

“With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?”

“I tell you what it is, landlord,” said I quite calmly, “you'd better stop spinning that yarn to me—I'm not green.”

“May be not,” taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, “but I rayther guess you'll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderin' his head.”

“I'll break it for him,” said I, now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord's.

“It's broke a'ready,” said he.

“Broke,” said I—“broke, do you mean?”

“Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess.”

“Landlord,” said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow-storm—“landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow—a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution.”

“Wall,” said the landlord, fetching a long breath, “that's a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions.”

This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me—but at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolators?

“Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man.”

“He pays reg'lar,” was the rejoinder. “But come, it's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes—it's a nice bed; Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There's plenty of room for two to kick about in that bed; it's an almighty big bed that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm. Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here, I'll give ye a glim in a jiffy;” and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed “I vum it's Sunday—you won't see that harpooneer to-night; he's come to anchor somewhere—come along then; do come; won't ye come?”

I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep abreast.

“There,” said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; “there, make yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye.” I turned round from eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.

Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room, there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner; also a large seaman's bag, containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed.

But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck.
☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽☾☽

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This chapter is too long!
I’ll release chapter in parts from now on I think… It’s faster that way.

[1] Young Lady.
[2] Both of them areι­”in the Japanese. soι­”ηŽ‹could mean Magic Lord or Demon Lord.
[3] Since Ma could means Magic or Demon: so, Magical Demon Race… LoL
[4] SAFE and OUT are from Baseball term.

26 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 23, 2018 at 9:39 PM

    I almost forgot the existence of this novel.
    I have to read the novel from the beginning again.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yuki HyuushiiApril 23, 2018 at 10:19 PM

    Long time no see~

    Thank you for the update ^_^

    ReplyDelete
  3. LOLMANApril 23, 2018 at 10:26 PM

    Thank for chapter and go to beginning πŸ˜πŸš…

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownApril 23, 2018 at 10:50 PM

    ty for chapter :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. AquarilasApril 24, 2018 at 1:37 AM

    Thanks for the new chapter!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Reaper PhoenixApril 24, 2018 at 1:59 AM

    Thanks 4 the translation!

    Going to reread past chapters.

    ReplyDelete
  7. BraidsApril 24, 2018 at 2:50 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Pranta20141April 24, 2018 at 4:26 AM

    thanks for the chap.

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousApril 24, 2018 at 5:22 AM

    No wonder it took so long to translate this. We all thought it was isekai, but then surprise (insert Dio meme) its yaoi.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousJanuary 18, 2019 at 8:53 PM

      Lol. Same, it happens to me too.
      Just press the button. (button picture)
      It's been mentioned to press the button before reading.

      Delete
  10. AshuraaliApril 25, 2018 at 7:08 AM

    Long time no see!! Im happy that you are fine and still translating!!
    Thank you for this chapter even when it was long ^^

    ReplyDelete
  11. AnonymousApril 26, 2018 at 3:08 AM

    When are you going to update Our New World?
    Last time you updated that story was July of 2017.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Satou ScarletApril 28, 2018 at 3:49 PM

    Thanks for the chapter :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. RooiSlangWTFApril 29, 2018 at 12:06 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  14. RooiSlangWTFApril 29, 2018 at 12:17 AM

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  15. UnknownMay 17, 2018 at 6:39 PM

    Thanks for the update! I love this story and was starting to worry it wouldn't be translated any further! Keep up the awesome work!

    ReplyDelete
  16. AskJune 17, 2018 at 1:57 AM

    Thanks!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  17. DragonarcJanuary 11, 2019 at 1:51 PM

    Will the be anymore update for this novel? Thx

    ReplyDelete
  18. AnonymousJanuary 18, 2019 at 8:56 PM

    Thanks for translating.
    Looking forward to the new chapter.

    ReplyDelete
  19. AnonymousFebruary 11, 2019 at 10:13 PM

    Hi, Yukkuri-san. Can you please update this story? I have been craving for Mira's cuteness and awesomeness for few years already. Sorry that I had to request this of you and I apologise if I am being rude. And thank you very much for being willing to translate for us.

    ReplyDelete
  20. AnonymousFebruary 24, 2019 at 4:08 AM

    its been a year since the last update i doubt itll update soon. but i oh so enjoyed it

    ReplyDelete
  21. CydraMarch 10, 2019 at 5:38 PM

    Did you drop this novel?

    ReplyDelete
  22. mechapandaApril 1, 2019 at 12:24 PM

    I just binged through all of the chapters. Thanks for the translations. I hope you can get around to translating more of it soon, although i understand if work is in the way..

    ReplyDelete
  23. Karma95April 9, 2019 at 9:34 AM

    Will you be updating anytime soon? I really hope to find out what the big "lie" is and what the "promise" is....Aaaand to see more Vil lol, I love him already.
    But really, I hope you do continue this.

    ReplyDelete
  24. UnknownApril 7, 2020 at 3:48 PM

    Update please !!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  25. UnknownApril 7, 2020 at 3:48 PM

    It's been so long since you last updated !!

    ReplyDelete