Moby Dick

by Herman Melville 


Preliminary Matter.  

This text of Melville's Moby-Dick is based on the Hendricks House edition.
Any subsequent copies of this data must include this notice  
and any publications resulting from analysis of this data must
include reference to Professor Irey's work.

Etymology  (Supplied by a late consumptive usher to a grammar school.)
The pale Ushei{rthreadbare} in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now.
He was ever  dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief,
mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world.
He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
Extracts (supplied by a sub-sub-librarian.)
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grubworm of a poor 
devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and 
street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales 
he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane.
Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy
whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel
cetology.  Far from it.  As touching the ancient authors generally, as well 
as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining,
as affording a glancing bird's eye view of what has been promiscuously said,
thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations,
including our own.

So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am.
Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will 
ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong;
but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too;
and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them bluntly, with full eyes and empty 
glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness i{give} it up, sub-subs!
For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world,
by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless!
Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye!  But
gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your  hearts; for
your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens,
and making refugees of long-pampered  Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against
your coming.  Here ye strike but splintered hearts together i{there}, ye shall
strike unsplinterable
.. < chapter I 2  LOOMINGS >

     Call me Ishmael.  Some years ago--never mind how
long precisely --having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular
to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the
watery part of the world.  It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and
regulating the circulation.  Whenever I find myself growing grim about the
mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find
myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the
rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an
upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me
from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking
people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

     This is my substitute for pistol and ball.  With a philosophical flourish
Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.  There is
nothing surprising in this.  If they but knew it, almost all men in their
degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the
ocean with me.  There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round
by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf.

     Right and left, the streets take you waterward.  Its extreme down-town is
the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by
breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.  Look at the
crowds of water-gazers there.  Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath
afternoon.  Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by
Whitehall northward.  What do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all
around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean
reveries.  Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads;
some looking over the bulwarks glasses!
.. 

of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all 
landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? 
Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly 
bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of 
yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And 
there they stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues, --north, east, 
south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships 
attract them thither? Once more. Say, you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and 
ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most 
absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will 
infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, 
try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation 
and water are wedded for ever. But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most 
enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his 
trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his 
cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping 
spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes 
down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic 
stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, ..

when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the one charm wanting? --Water --there is 
not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the 
poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly 
needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust 
healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself 
feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians 
hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without 
meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he 
saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is 
the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all. Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going 
to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it 
inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag 
unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick --grow quarrelsome --don't sleep of nights --do not enjoy 
themselves much, as a general thing; --no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to 
sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For 
my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much 
as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as 
cook, -- though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board --yet, somehow, I 
never fancied broiling fowls; --though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no 
one who will ..

speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the 
old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses 
the pyramids. No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft 
there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in 
a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come 
of an old established family in the land, the van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just 
previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys 
stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from the schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong 
decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time. What of it, if some old 
hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, 
in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and 
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old 
sea-captains may order me about--however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all 
right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way -- either in a physical or metaphysical point of 
view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be 
content. Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay 
passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the 
difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the 
two orchard ..

thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, --what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is 
really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account 
can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition! Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, 
because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent 
than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the 
quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not 
so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little 
suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my 
head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and 
secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way --he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my 
going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in 
as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run 
something like this: Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States. Whaling Voyage by one Ishmael. Bloody 
Battle in Affghanistan. Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this 
shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts 
in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces --though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the 
circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various 
disguises, induced me to set about ..

performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill 
and discriminating judgment. chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous 
and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the 
undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, 
helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am 
tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not 
ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it--would they let me --since it is but 
well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in. By reason of these things, then, the whaling 
voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my 
purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand 
hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air. ..

.. < chapter ii 24 THE CARPET-BAG > I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and started for 
Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was on a Saturday night 
in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of 
reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday. As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling ..

stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so 
doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, boisterous something 
about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has of late 
been gradually monopolizing the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet 
Nantucket was her great original --the Tyre of this Carthage; --the place where the first dead American whale was stranded. 
Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the 
Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported 
cobble-stones --so goes the story --to throw at the whales, in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon 
from the bowsprit? Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark 
for my destined port, it became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, 
nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had 
sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver, --So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in 
the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the 
south --wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and 
don't be too particular. With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of The Crossed Harpoons --but it looked 
too expensive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red windows of the Sword-Fish Inn, there came such fervent rays, 
that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten 
inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement, --rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, 
because from hard, remorseless ..

service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to 
watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; 
don't you hear? get away from before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct 
followed the streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns. Such dreary 
streets! Blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. 
At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came 
to a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if 
it were meant for the uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! 
thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah? But The Crossed 
Harpoons, and The Sword-Fish? --this, then, must needs be the sign of The Trap. However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud 
voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior door. It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred 
black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a 
negro church; and the preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing 
there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of The Trap! Moving on, I at last came to a 
dim sort of light not far from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over 
the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath -- 
The Spouter-Inn: --Peter Coffin. Coffin? --Spouter? --Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought I. But it is a 
common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and 
the place, for the time, looked ..

quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of 
some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very 
spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee. It was a queer sort of place --a gable-ended old house, one side palsied 
as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse 
howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one 
in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon, says an 
old writer --of whose works I possess the only copy extant -- it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at 
it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where 
the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier. True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred 
to my mind --old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a 
pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late to 
make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. 
Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his 
shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the 
tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper --(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! 
What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of 
everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals. But what thinks Lazarus? Can he 
warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would 
he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye ..

gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost? Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the 
curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet 
Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, 
he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans. But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is plenty of 
that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this Spouter may be. ..

.. < chapter iii 14 THE SPOUTER-INN > Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling 
entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large 
oil-painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was 
only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way 
arrive at an understanding of its purpose. such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought 
some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of 
much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the 
back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted. 
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the ..

centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture 
truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity 
about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous 
painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through. --It's the Black Sea in a midnight 
gale. --It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. --It's a blasted heath. --It's a Hyperborean winter scene. 
--It's the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something 
in the picture's midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a 
gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself? In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly 
based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a 
Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and 
an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three 
mast-heads. The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were 
thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; and one was 
sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You 
shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a 
hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were 
storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a 
sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon--so like a corkscrew now--was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years 
afterward slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered ..

nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last was found 
imbedded in the hump. Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way --cut through what in old times must have 
been a great central chimney with fire-places all round --you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such 
low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft's 
cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, 
low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest 
nooks. Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den --the bar-- a rude attempt at a right whale's 
head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath 
it. within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like 
another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly 
sells the sailors deliriums and death. Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders 
without --within, the villanous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians 
rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a 
penny more; and so on to the full glass --the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling. Upon entering the 
place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander. I 
sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full 
--not a bed unoccupied. But avast, he added, tapping his forehead, you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer's blanket, 
have ye? I s'pose you are goin' a whalin', so you'd better get used to that sort of thing. ..

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer 
might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, 
why rather than wander further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man's 
blanket. I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper? --you want supper? Supper 'll be ready directly. I sat down on an old 
wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his 
jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his legs. he was trying his hand at a ship under 
full sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought. At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an 
adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland --no fire at all --the landlord said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but two dismal 
tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding 
tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind --not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; 
good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most 
direful manner. My boy, said the landlord, you'll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty. Landlord, I whispered, that aint the 
harpooneer, is it? 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 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 Alleganian 
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 favorite 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 cant 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 around 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 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 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. After ..

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. I sat down 
on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time 
on the bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my 
coat, and thought a little more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed as I was, and 
remembering what the landlord said about the harpooneer's not coming home at all that night, it being so very late, I made no 
more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself to 
the care of heaven. Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled 
about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a 
good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the 
room from under the door. Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler. But I lay perfectly 
still, and resolved not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the 
other, the stranger entered the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the 
floor in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. 
I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This 
accomplished, however, he turned round --when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark purplish, yellow 
color, here and there stuck over with large, blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a terrible bedfellow; 
he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his 
face so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all, ..

those black squares on his cheeks. they were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this; but soon 
an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white man --a whaleman too--who, falling among the 
cannibals, had been tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages, must have met 
with a similar adventure. And what is it, thought I, after all! It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of 
skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely 
independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never 
heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South Seas; and perhaps 
the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like 
lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in 
it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in 
the middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head --a ghastly thing enough --and crammed it down into the bag. He now 
took off his hat --a new beaver hat --when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head --none 
to speak of at least -- nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all 
the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker 
than ever I bolted a dinner. Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor 
back. I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is 
the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, i confess i was now as much afraid of 
him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that 
I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him. 
..

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of 
him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have 
been in a Thirty Years' War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as 
if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some 
abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked 
to think of it. A peddler of heads too --perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine --heavens! look 
at that tomahawk! But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something that completely fascinated my 
attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he 
had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch 
on its back, and exactly the color of a three days' old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought 
that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that 
it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to 
be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fireplace, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunchbacked 
image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. the chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought 
this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol. I now screwed my eyes hard towards the 
half hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime --to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of 
shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and 
applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into 
the fire, and still hastier ..

withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; 
then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not 
seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still 
stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or 
other, during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up 
very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock. 
All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his 
business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was put out, to 
break the spell into which I had so long been bound. But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one. 
Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his 
mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild 
cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt 
of astonishment he began feeling me. Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the wall, and 
then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his 
guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning. Who-e debel you? --he at last said -- you no 
speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e. And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark. Landlord, for God's 
sake, Peter Coffin! shouted I. Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me! Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e! 
again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I 
thought ..

my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand, and leaping from 
the bed I ran up to him. Don't be afraid now, said he, grinning again. Queequeg here wouldn't harm a hair of your head. Stop 
your grinning, shouted I, and why didn't you tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal? I thought ye know'd it; 
--didn't I tell ye, he was peddlin' heads around town? --but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here --you 
sabbee me, I sabbee you --this man sleepe you --you sabbee? Me sabbee plenty --grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and 
sitting up in bed. You gettee in, he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He really 
did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he 
was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought i to myself --the 
man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a 
sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. Landlord, said I, tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call 
it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. 
It's dangerous. Besides, I aint insured. This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned me to 
get into bed --rolling over to one side as much as to say --I wont touch a leg of ye. Good night, landlord, said I, you may 
go. I turned in, and never slept better in my life. ..

.. < chapter iv 2 THE COUNTERPANE > Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most 
loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd 
little parti-colored squares and triangles; and this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a 
figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade --owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun 
and shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times --this same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world 
like a strip of that same patchwork quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could hardly tell 
it from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell 
that Queequeg was hugging me. My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a child, I well remember a 
somewhat similar circumstance that befell me; whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The 
circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other --I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as i had 
seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending 
me to bed supperless, --my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two 
o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But there was no 
help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill 
time, and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets. I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse 
before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in ..

bed! the small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun shining in at the window, and a great 
rattling of coaches in the streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse and worse --at last I got up, 
dressed, and softly going down in my stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at her feet, 
beseeching her as a particular favor to give me a good slippering for my misbehavior; anything indeed but condemning me to lie 
abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to 
my room. For several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I have ever done since, even from the 
greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it 
--half steeped in dreams --I opened my eyes, and the before sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a 
shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed 
in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, 
seemed closely seated by my bedside. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most awful fears, not 
daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be broken. 
I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, 
and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very 
hour, I often puzzle myself with it. Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the supernatural hand in mine 
were very similar, in their strangeness, to those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg's pagan arm thrown 
round me. But at length all the past night's events soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive 
to the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm --unlock his bridegroom clasp --yet, sleeping as he was, he 
still 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 v 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 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, seemed like the Andes' western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting 
climates, zone by zone. Grub, ho! now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to breakfast. They say that men 
who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though: Ledyard, 
the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. 
But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an 
empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's performances -- this kind of travel, I say, may 
not be the very best mode of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had 
anywhere. These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that after we were all seated at the table, and I was 
preparing to hear some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound silence. 
And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest 
bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas --entire strangers to them --and duelled them dead without winking; and 
yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table --all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes --looking round as sheepishly 
at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious sight; these 
bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen! But as for Queequeg --why, Queequeg sat there among them --at the head of the 
table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not 
have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over 
the table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him. But that was certainly 
very coolly done by him, and every ..

one knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly. We will not speak of all Queequeg's 
peculiarities here; how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare. 
Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was 
sitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll. ..

.. < chapter vi 11 THE STREET > If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an individual as 
Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first 
daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford. In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently 
offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean 
mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in 
the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water street and Wapping. In these 
last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages 
outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare. But, besides the Feegeeans, 
Tongatabooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians, and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft which 
unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still more curious, certainly more comical. ..

There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the 
fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch 
the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few 
hours old. Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a 
sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak. No town-bred dandy will compare 
with a country-bred one -- I mean a downright bumpkin dandy --a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in 
buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a 
distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the comical things he does upon reaching the 
seaport. In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor 
Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and all, down 
the throat of the tempest. But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and bumpkins to show her 
visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day 
perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten 
one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true 
enough; but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they 
pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses; parks and 
gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country? Go and 
gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave 
houses and flowery gardens came from the ..

Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea. Can 
Herr Alexander perform a feat like that? In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters, and 
portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece. You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say, 
they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles. In summer 
time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples --long avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the 
beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering upright cones of congregated 
blossoms. So omnipotent is art; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the 
barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation's final day. And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. 
But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. 
Elsewhere match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk, their 
sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic 
sands. .. < chapter vii 26 THE CHAPEL > In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few are the moody 
fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did 
not. Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this special errand. The sky had changed from clear, ..

sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way 
against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and widows. A 
muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting 
apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there 
these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall 
on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote: -- Sacred To the 
Memory of John Talbot, Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, November 
1st, . This Tablet Is erected to his Memory By his Sister. Sacred To the Memory of Robert Long, Willis Ellery, Nathan Coleman, 
Walter Canny, Seth Macy, and Samuel Gleig, Forming one of the boats' crews of the Ship Eliza, Who were towed out of sight by a 
Whale, On the Off-shore Ground in the Pacific, December 31st, . This Marble Is here placed by their surviving Shipmates. ..

Sacred To the Memory of The late Captain Ezekiel Hardy, Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast 
of Japan, August 3d, This Tablet Is erected to his Memory by His Widow. Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and 
jacket, I seated myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity 
of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only person present 
who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid 
inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the 
congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several women present 
wear the countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, 
in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh. Oh! ye whose 
dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say --here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the 
desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What 
despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all 
Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand 
in the cave of Elephanta as here. In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a 
universal proverb says of them, that ..

they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is that to his name who yesterday departed 
for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the 
remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, 
unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we 
still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so 
strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are 
not without their meanings. But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her 
most vital hope. It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble 
tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me, Yes, 
Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for 
promotion, it seems -- aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling 
--a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of 
Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things 
spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of 
air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And 
therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself 
cannot. ..

.. < chapter viii 2 THE PULPIT > I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness entered; 
immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, 
sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the 
whalemen, among whom he was a very great favorite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for many years past 
had dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old 
age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there 
shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom --the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow. No one 
having previously heard his history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there 
were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life he had led. When he 
entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down 
with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it 
had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent 
corner; when, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit. Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty 
one, and since a regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already small 
area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without a 
stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting ..

a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes 
for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany color, the whole contrivance, considering what 
manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both 
hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailorlike but 
still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel. the perpendicular 
parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of 
wood, so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however 
convenient for a ship, these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple 
after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till 
the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec. I pondered some time without fully comprehending 
the reason for this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could not suspect him of 
courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing; 
furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies his 
spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine 
of the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing stronghold --a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a 
perennial well of water within the walls. But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place, borrowed from the 
chaplain's former sea-farings. Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back was 
adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and 
snowy breakers. But high above the ..

flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel's face; and 
this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship's tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted 
into the Victory's plank where Nelson fell. Ah, noble ship, the angel seemed to say, beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and 
bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling off --serenest azure is at hand. Nor was the 
pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in 
the likeness of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on the projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a 
ship's fiddle-headed beak. What could be more full of meaning? --for the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the 
rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and 
the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. 
Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow. .. < chapter ix 23 THE 
SERMON > Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense. Starboard 
gangway, there! side away to larboard--larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships! There was a low rumbling of heavy 
sea-boots among the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and every eye on the 
preacher. He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his 
closed eyes, ..

and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea. This ended, in prolonged 
solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog --in such tones he commenced 
reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and 
joy -- The ribs and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom, While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by, And lift me 
deepening down to doom. I saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can 
tell-- Oh, I was plunging to despair. In black distress, I called my God, When I could scarce believe him mine, He bowed his 
ear to my complaints -- No more the whale did me confine. With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne; 
Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone The face of my Deliverer God. My song for ever shall record That terrible, that joyful 
hour; I give the glory to my God, His all the mercy and the power. Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high 
above the howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, 
folding his hand down upon the proper page, said: Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah -- 
And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters --four yarns --is 
one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine 
sound! what a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet! What ..

a noble thing is that canticle in the fish's belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods surging over 
us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters; sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us! But what is this 
lesson that the book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson 
to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin, 
hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and joy of 
Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God 
--never mind now what that command was, or how conveyed --which he found a hard command. But all the things that God would 
have us do are hard for us to do --remember that --and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we 
obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists. 
With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship 
made by men, will carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains of this earth. He skulks about the 
wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship that's bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded meaning here. By all 
accounts Tarshish could have been no other city than the modern Cadiz. That's the opinion of learned men. And where is Cadiz, 
shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the 
Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the 
Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the westward from that, just outside the 
Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most 
contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping 
like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in 
..

those days, jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he's a 
fugitive! no baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag, --no friends accompany him to the wharf with their adieux. At 
last, after much dodging search, he finds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps on board to 
see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger's evil 
eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong 
intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but still serious way, one whispers to the 
other --"Jack, he's robbed a widow;" or,"Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or,"Harry lad, I guess he's the adulterer 
that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom." Another runs to read the bill that's 
stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a 
parricide, and containing a description of his person. He reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill; while all his sympathetic 
shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his boldness 
to his face, only looks so much the more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that itself is strong suspicion. 
So he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he 
descends into the cabin. "Who's there?" cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making out his papers for the Customs 
--"who's there?" Oh! how that harmless question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But he rallies. 
"I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon sail ye, sir?" Thus far the busy captain had not looked up to jonah, 
though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. "We 
sail with the next coming tide," at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing him. "No sooner, sir?" --"Soon enough for 
any honest man that goes a passenger." Ha! Jonah, that's another stab. But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent. 
"I'll sail with ye," --he says, --"the passage ..

money, how much is that, --I'll pay now." For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be 
overlooked in this history,"that he paid the fare thereof" ere the craft did sail. And taken with the context, this is full of 
meaning. Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in 
the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a 
pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah's purse, ere he judge him openly. 
He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it's assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same 
time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions 
still molest the Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down 
for his passage. "Point out my state-room, Sir," says Jonah now. "I'm travel-weary; I need sleep." "Thou look'st like it," 
says the Captain, "there's thy room." Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him 
foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of convicts' cells being 
never allowed to be locked within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the little 
state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and jonah gasps. then, in that contracted hole, sunk, 
too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold 
him in the smallest of his bowel's wards. Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah's 
room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though 
in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight 
itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his 
berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. 
But that contradiction in the lamp more and ..

more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. "Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!" he groans, "straight 
upward, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!" Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies 
to his bed, still reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the Roman race-horse but so much the more 
strike his steel tags into him; as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish, praying God for 
annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the 
man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his 
berth, Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep. And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts 
off her cables; and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea. That ship, my 
friends, was the first of recorded smugglers! the contraband was jonah. but the sea rebels; he will not bear the wicked 
burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her; when 
boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard; when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders 
with trampling feet right over Jonah's head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky 
and raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale, which even 
now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship --a berth 
in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead ear, 
"What meanest thou, O sleeper! arise!" Startled from his lethargy by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and 
stumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow 
leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, 
till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon shows ..

her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high 
upward, but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep. Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all 
his cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their 
suspicions of him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven, they fall to casting 
lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how furiously they 
mob him with their questions. "What is thine occupation? whence comest thou? thy country? what people?" but mark now, my 
shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they not only 
receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is 
forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him. "I am a Hebrew," he cries --and then --"I fear the Lord the God of 
Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!" Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God then! 
Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still are 
pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of his deserts, --when 
wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for his sake this great tempest 
was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other means to save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale 
howls louder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah. And now 
behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the 
sea is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such 
a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws ..

awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and 
so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep 
and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, 
contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, 
shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to God was 
this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah 
before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed 
to repent of it like Jonah. While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking, slanting storm without seemed to 
add new power to the preacher, who, when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself. His deep chest heaved 
as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off his 
swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange 
to them. There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, 
standing motionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself. But again he leaned over towards 
the people, and bowing his head lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these words: Shipmates, 
God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson 
that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how 
gladly would I come down from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some 
one of you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me as a pilot of ..

the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those 
unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked nineveh, jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and 
sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have 
seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him 
along"into the midst of the seas," where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and"the weeds were wrapped 
about his head," and all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet --"out of the 
belly of hell" --when the whale grounded upon the ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet 
when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching 
up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and"vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;" when 
the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten --his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously 
murmuring of the ocean --Jonah did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of 
Falsehood! That was it! This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. 
Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them 
into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe 
to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, 
woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway! He drooped and fell away from 
himself for a moment; then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly 
enthusiasm, -- but oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that 
delight, than the bottom of the woe is ..

deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him --a far, far upward, and inward delight --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 X 24 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 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 a 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 the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. 
There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild 
he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that 
would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since 
Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my 
best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last ..

night's hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he 
looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented. We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to him the 
purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that 
we went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social 
smoke; and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild 
pipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between us. If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the 
Pagan's breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as 
naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the 
waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly 
die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing 
to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply. After supper, and another social chat and 
smoke, we went to our room together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his enormous tobacco wallet, and 
groping under the tobacco, drew out some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and mechanically dividing 
them into two equal portions, pushed one of them towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he silenced 
me by pouring them into my trowsers' pockets. I let them stay. He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and 
removed the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed anxious for me to join him; but well knowing 
what was to follow, I deliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or otherwise. I was a good 
Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with ..

this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the 
magnanimous God of heaven and earth --pagans and all included --can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? 
Impossible! But what is worship? --to do the will of God -- that is worship. And what is the will of God? --to do to my fellow 
man what I would have my fellow man to do to me -- that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish 
that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. consequently, i must then 
unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered 
him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to 
bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world. But we did not go to sleep without some little chat. How it is I 
know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open 
the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. 
Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg --a cosy, loving pair. ..

.. < chapter xi 24 NIGHTGOWN > We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then 
affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy 
were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we 
felt like getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future. Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that 
our recumbent ..

position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, 
leaning against the head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two noses bending over them, as if our 
knee-pans were warming-pans. We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of 
bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. 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 blanket 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 xii 21 BIOGRAPHICAL > Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down 
in 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 ringbolt 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 xiii 2 WHEELBARROW > 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 inland reapers and mowers, who go 
into the farmers' meadows armed with their own scythes --though in no wise obliged to furnished them -- even so, Queequeg, for 
his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon. Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about 
the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, ..

in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing --though in truth he was 
entirely so, concerning the precise way in which to manage the barrow --Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and 
then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf. Why, said I, Queequeg, you might have known better than that, one would 
think. Didn't the people laugh? Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of Rokovoko, it seems, at their 
wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this 
punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant 
ship once touched at Rokovoko, and its commander --from all accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea 
captain --this commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg's sister, a pretty young princess just turned of ten. 
Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at the bride's bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned 
the post of honor, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the King, Queequeg's 
father. Grace being said, -- for those people have their grace as well as we --though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at 
such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all 
feasts --Grace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the island; that is, 
dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed 
next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and thinking himself --being Captain of a ship --as having plain precedence over a 
mere island King, especially in the King's own house --the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punch bowl; 
--taking it i suppose for a huge finger-glass. now, said Queequeg, what you tink now, --Didn't our people laugh? At last, 
passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On ..

one side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills 
and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and 
safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to 
melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a 
second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the 
intolerableness of all earthly effort. Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little Moss tossed the 
quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air! --how I spurned that turnpike earth! 
--that common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of 
the sea which will permit no records. At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me. His dusky nostrils 
swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed teeth. On, on we flew, and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast; 
ducked and dived her brows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a 
wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes. So full of this reeling scene were we, as we stood by 
the plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who 
marvelled that two fellow beings should be so companionable; as though a white man were anything more dignified than a 
whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who, by their intense greenness, must have come from the 
heart and centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him behind his back. I thought the 
bumpkin's hour of doom was come. Dropping his harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost miraculous 
dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into the air; then slightly ..

tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon 
him, lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff. Capting! Capting! yelled the bumpkin, running towards that 
officer; Capting, Capting, here's the devil. Hallo, you sir, cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking up to 
Queequeg, what in thunder do you mean by that? Don't you know you might have killed that chap? What him say? said Queequeg, as 
he mildly turned to me. He say, said I, that you came near kill-e that man there, pointing to the still shivering greenhorn. 
Kill-e, cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly expression of disdain, ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; 
Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale! Look you, roared the Captain, I'll kill-e you, you cannibal, 
if you try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye. But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the 
Captain to mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom 
was now flying from side to side, completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck. The poor fellow whom Queequeg had 
handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it, seemed 
madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, almost in one ticking of a w