Moby Dick

The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth,
some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality
in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.
Nothing exists in itself.  If you flatter yourself that you
are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time,
then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.  But if,
like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown
of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general
consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.
For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished
with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich.
For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing
but the blankets between you and your snugness and the cold
of the outer air.  Then there you lie like the one warm spark
in the heart of an arctic crystal.

We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time,
when all at once I thought I would open my eyes; for when
between sheets, whether by day or by night, and whether
asleep or awake, I have a way of always keeping my eyes shut,
in order the more to concentrate the snugness of being in bed.
Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his
eyes be closed; as if, darkness were indeed the proper element
of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.
Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant
and self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom
of the unilluminated twelve-o'clock-at-night, I experienced
a disagreeable revulsion.  Nor did I at all object to the hint
from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light,
seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a strong
desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk.  Be it said,
that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking
in the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices
grow when love once comes to bend them.  For now I liked
nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed,
because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then.
I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord's policy of insurance.
I was only alive to the condensed confidential comfortableness
of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.
With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed
the Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew
over us a blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame
of the new-lit lamp.

Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage
away to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke
of his native island; and, eager to hear his history,
I begged him to go on and tell it.  He gladly complied.
Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words,
yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar
with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole
story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.



CHAPTER 12

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.