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hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain.

I now strove to rouse him--"Queequeg!"--but his only answer

was a snore.  I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it

were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a slight scratch.

Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping

by the savage's side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby.

A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange

house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk!

"Queequeg!--in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!"  At length,

by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations

upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that

matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt;

and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over

like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed,

stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes

as if he did not altogether remember how I came to be there,

though a dim consciousness of knowing something about me seemed

slowly dawning over him.  Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him,

having no serious misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly observing

so curious a creature.  When, at last, his mind seemed made

up touching the character of his bedfellow, and he became,

as it were, reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon the floor,

and by certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that,

if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me

to dress afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself.

Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is a very

civilized overture; but, the truth is, these savages have an

innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is marvellous

how essentially polite they are.  I pay this particular

compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much

civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness;

staring at him from the bed, and watching all his toilette motions;

for the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding.

Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you don't see every day,

he and his ways were well worth unusual regarding.



He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat,

a very tall one, by the by, and then--still minus his trowsers--

he hunted up his boots.  What under the heavens he did it for,

I cannot tell, but his next movement was to crush himself--

boots in hand, and hat on--under the bed; when, from sundry

violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was hard at work

booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I ever heard of,

is any man required to be private when putting on his boots.

But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition state--

neither caterpillar nor butterfly.  He was just enough civilized

to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manner.

His education was not yet completed.  He was an undergraduate.

If he had not been a small degree civilized, he very probably

would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then,

if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt

of getting under the bed to put them on.  At last, he emerged

with his hat very much dented and crushed down over his eyes,

and began creaking and limping about the room, as if, not being

much accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones--

probably not made to order either--rather pinched and tormented

him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning.



Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that

the street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view

into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that

Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on;

I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat,

and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible.

He complied, and then proceeded to wash himself.  At that time in

the morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg,

to my amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions

to his chest, arms, and hands.  He then donned his waistcoat,

and taking up a piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table,

dipped it into water and commenced lathering his face.

I was watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and behold,

he takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long

wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot,

and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall,

begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks.

Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers's best cutlery with a vengeance.

Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came to know

of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly

sharp the long straight edges are always kept.



The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched

out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket,

and sporting his harpoon like a marshal's baton.







CHAPTER 5



Breakfast





I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted

the grinning landlord very pleasantly.  I cherished no malice

towards him, though he had been skylarking with me not a little

in the matter of my bedfellow.



However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too

scarce a good thing; the more's the pity.  So, if any one man,

in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke

to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully

allow himself to spend and to be spent in that way.

And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him,

be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.



The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping

in the night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at.

They were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates,

and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers,

and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers;

a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an unshorn,

shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.



You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore.

This young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted

pear in hue, and would seem to smell almost as musky;

he cannot have been three days landed from his Indian voyage.

That man next him looks a few shades lighter; you might say

a touch of satin wood is in him.  In the complexion of a third

still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly bleached withal;

he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore.  But who could

show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints,

t/files/moby11.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

Biographical





Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West

and South.  It is not down on any map; true places never are.



When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands

in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were

a green sapling; even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul,

lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom

than a specimen whaler or two.  His father was a High Chief,

a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side

he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors.

There was excellent blood in his veins--royal stuff;

though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity

he nourished in his untutored youth.



A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg sought

a passage to Christian lands.  But the ship, having her full

complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King

his father's influence could prevail.  But Queequeg vowed a vow.

Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he

knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island.

On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land,

covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water.

Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its

prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand;

and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out;

gained her side; with one backward dash of his foot capsized

and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing himself

at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there,

and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.



In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a

cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King,

and Queequeg budged not.  Struck by his desperate dauntlessness,

and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented,

and told him he might make himself at home.  But this fine young savage--

this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain's cabin.

They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him.

But like Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities,

Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might

happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen.

For at bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a profound

desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make

his people still happier than they were; and more than that,

still better than they were.  But, alas! the practices of whalemen

soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable

and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father's heathens.

Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the sailors

did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent

their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost.

Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.



And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,

wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish.

Hence the queer ways about him, though now some time from home.



By hints I asked him whether he did not propose going back,

and having a coronation; since he might now consider his father

dead and gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts.

He answered no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity,

or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure

and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him.

But by and by, he said, he would return,--as soon as he felt

himself baptized again.  For the nonce, however, he proposed

to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans.

They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was

in lieu of a sceptre now.



I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his

future movements.  He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation.

Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed

him of my intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most

promising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from.

He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard

the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat,

the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with both

my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds.

To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection I now

felt for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such,

could not fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me,

was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though well

acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant seamen.



His story being ended with his pipe's last dying puff,

Queequeg embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine,

and blowing out the light, we rolled over from each other,

this way and that, and very soon were sleeping.







CHAPTER 13



Wheelbarrow





Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head

to a barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade's bill;

using, however, my comrade's money.  The grinning landlord,

as well as the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden

friendship which had sprung up between me and Queequeg--

especially as Peter Coffin's cock and bull stories about him

had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person

whom I now companied with.



We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own poor

carpet-bag, and Queequeg's canvas sack and hammock, away we went down

to "the Moss," the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf.

As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so much--

for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets,--

but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms.  But we heeded

them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg

now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs.

I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore,

and whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons.

To this, in substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was

true enough, yet he had a particular affection for his own harpoon,

because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat,

and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales.  In short, like many

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No good blood in their veins?  They have something better

than royal blood there.  The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin

was Mary Morrel; afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of

the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line

of Folgers and harpooneers--all kith and kin to noble Benjamin--

this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world

to the other.



Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable.



Whaling not respectable?  Whaling is imperial!  By old English

statutory law, the whale is declared "a royal fish."



Oh, that's only nominal!  The whale himself has never figured

in any grand imposing way.



The whale never figured in any grand imposing way?  In one of the mighty

triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world's capital,

the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian coast,

were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*





*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.





Grant it, since you cite it; but say what you will, there is no real

dignity in whaling.



No dignity in whaling?  The dignity of our calling the very

heavens attest.  Cetus is a constellation in the South!  No more!

Drive down your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off

to Queequeg!  No more!  I know a man that, in his lifetime

has taken three hundred and fifty whales.  I account that man

more honorable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted

of taking as many walled towns.



And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered

prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small

but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of;

if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather

have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors,

or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS.  in my desk,

then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling;

for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.









CHAPTER 25



Postscript





In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught

but substantiated facts.  But after embattling his facts,

an advocate who should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise,

which might tell eloquently upon his cause--such an advocate,

would he not be blame-worthy?



It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens,

even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them

for their functions is gone through.  There is a saltcellar

of state, so called, and there may be a caster of state.

How they use the salt, precisely--who knows?  Certain I am,

however, that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation,

even as a head of salad.  Can it be, though, that they

anoint it with a view of making its interior run well,

as they anoint machinery?  Much might be ruminated here,

concerning the essential dignity of this regal process,

because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow

who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing.

In truth, a mature man who uses hairoil, unless medicinally,

that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.

As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality.



But the only thing to be considered here is this--what kind of oil is used

at coronations?  Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil,

nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil.

What then can it possibly be, but the sperm oil in its unmanufactured,

unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?



Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings

and queens with coronation stuff!







CHAPTER 26



Knights and Squires





The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket,

and a Quaker by descent.  He was a long, earnest man,

and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure

hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit.

Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like

bottled ale.  He must have been born in some time of general

drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his

state is famous.  Only some thirty arid summers had he seen;

those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness.

But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token

of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication

of any bodily blight.  It was merely the condensation of the man.

He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary.

His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped

up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength,

like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared

to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now;

for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer,

his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates.

Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering

images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted

through life.  A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most

part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter

of sounds.  Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude,

there were certain qualities in him which at times affected,

and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest.

Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep

natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did

therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort

of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather

to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance.

Outward portents and inward presentiments were his.

And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul,

much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape

wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original

ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent

influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush

of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more

perilous vicissitudes of the fishery.  "I will have no man

in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."

By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable

and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation

of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man

is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.



"Aye, aye," said Stubb, the second mate, "Starbuck, there,

is as careful a man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery."

But we shall ere long see what that word "careful" precisely means

when used by a man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter.



Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment;

but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally

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So that did you carry them the news that another flood had come;

they would only answer--"Well, boys, here's the ark!"



Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured off the western

coast of Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda;

indeed, as most of the ground, roundabout, was generally

recognised by the fishermen as an excellent spot for cruising;

therefore, as the Pequod gained more and more upon Java Head,

the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and admonished to keep wide awake.

But though the green palmy cliffs of the land soon loomed on

the starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils the fresh cinnamon

was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet was descried.

Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any game hereabouts,

the ship had well nigh entered the straits, when the customary

cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a spectacle

of singular magnificence saluted us.



But here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied activity

with which of late they have been hunted over all four oceans,

the Sperm Whales, instead of almost invariably sailing in small

detached companies, as in former times, are now frequently met

with in extensive herds, sometimes embracing so great a multitude,

that it would almost seem as if numerous nations of them had sworn

solemn league and covenant for mutual assistance and protection.

To this aggregation of the Sperm Whale into such immense caravans,

may be imputed the circumstance that even in the best cruising grounds,

you may now sometimes sail for weeks and months together,

without being greeted by a single spout; and then be suddenly

saluted by what sometimes seems thousands on thousands.



Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles,

and forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon,

a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling

in the noon-day air.  Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets

of the Right Whale, which, dividing at top, falls over in two branches,

like the cleft drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting

spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist,

continually rising and falling away to leeward.



Seen from the Pequod's deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill

of the sea, this host of vapory spouts, individually curling up into

the air, and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze,

showed like the thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis,

descried of a balmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.



As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains,

accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage in

their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the plain;

even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through

the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle,

and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.



Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; the harpooneers

handling their weapons, and loudly cheering from the heads

of their yet suspended boats.  If the wind only held,

little doubt had they, that chased through these Straits

of Sunda, the vast host would only deploy into the Oriental

seas to witness the capture of not a few of their number.

And who could tell whether, in that congregated caravan,

Moby Dick himself might not temporarily be swimming,

like the worshipped white-elephant in the coronation procession

of the Siamese!  So with stun-sail piled on stun-sail, we

sailed along, driving these leviathans before us; when, of a sudden,

the voice of Tashtego was heard, loudly directing attention

to something in our wake.



Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in our rear.

It seemed formed of detached white vapors, rising and falling something

like the spouts of the whales; only they did not so completely come

and go; for they constantly hovered, without finally disappearing.

Levelling his glass at this sight, Ahab quickly revolved in his

pivot-hole, crying, "Aloft there, and rig whips and buckets to wet

the sails;--Malays, sir, and after us!"



As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod

should fairly have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics

were now in hot pursuit, to make up for their over-cautious delay.

But when the swift Pequod, with a fresh leading wind, was herself

in hot chase; how very kind of these tawny philanthropists

to assist in speeding her on to her own chosen pursuit,--

mere riding-whips and rowels to her, that they were.

As with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced the deck;

in his forward turn beholding the monsters he chased,

and in the after one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him;

some such fancy as the above seemed his.  And when he glanced

upon the green walls of the watery defile in which the ship

was then sailing, and bethought him that through that gate lay

the route to his vengeance, and beheld, how that through that same

gate he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly end;

and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild pirates

and inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering him

on with their curses;--when all these conceits had passed

through his brain, Ahab's brow was left gaunt and ribbed,

like the black sand beach after some stormy tide has been gnawing it,

without being able to drag the firm thing from its place.



But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and when,

after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the Pequod

at last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side,

emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the harpooneers

seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining upon

the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriously gained

upon the Malays.  But still driving on in the wake of the whales,

at length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the ship neared them;

and the wind now dying away, word was passed to spring to the boats.

But no sooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinct of the

Sperm Whale, become notified of the three keels that were after them,--

though as yet a mile in their rear,--than they rallied again, and forming

in close ranks and battalions, so that their spouts all looked like

flashing lines of stacked bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity.



Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash,

and after several hours' pulling were almost disposed to renounce

the chase, when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave

animating tokens that they were now at last under the influence

of that strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the

fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied*. The

compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly

and steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measureless rout;

and like King Porus' elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander,

they seemed going mad with consternation.  In all directions