Moby Dick

who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth,
ever stands forth his own inexorable self.  Delight is to him
whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base
treacherous world has gone down beneath him.  Delight is to him,
who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys
all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators
and Judges.  Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges
no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven.
Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas
of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel
of the Ages.  And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his,
who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath--O Father!--
chiefly known to me by Thy rod--mortal or immortal, here I die.
I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own.
Yet this is nothing:  I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man
that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"

He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with
his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed,
and he was left alone in the place.



CHAPTER 10

A Bosom Friend


Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there
quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time.
He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on
the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his
face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face,
and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose,
meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way.

But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going to
the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began
counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page--
as I fancied--stopping for a moment, looking vacantly around him,
and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment.
He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at
number one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty,
and it was only by such a large number of fifties being found together,
that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.

With much interest I sat watching him.  Savage though he was,
and hideously marred about the face--at least to my taste--
his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no
means disagreeable.  You cannot hide the soul.  Through all his
unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple
honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold,
there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils.
And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about
the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim.
He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor.
Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was
drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive
than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide;
but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one.
It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington's head,
as seen in the popular busts of him.  It had the same long regularly
graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise
very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on top.
Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.

Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be
looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence,
never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared
wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book.
Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night previous,
and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found thrown
over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference
of his very strange.  But savages are strange beings; at times you
do not know exactly how to take them.  At first they are overawing;
their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems as Socratic wisdom.
I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very
little, with the other seamen in the inn.  He made no advances whatever;
appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances.
All this struck me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts,
there was something almost sublime in it.  Here was a man some
twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is--
which was the only way he could get there--thrown among people
as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet
he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity;
content with his own companionship; always equal to himself.  Surely this
was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard
there was such a thing as that.  But, perhaps, to be true philosophers,
we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving.
So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for
a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman,
he must have "broken his digester."

As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low,
in that mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air,
it then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms
gathering round the casements, and peering in upon us silent,
solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells;
I began to be sensible of strange feelings.  I felt a melting in me.
No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against