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_ Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, 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 ring-bolt there, and
swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a
cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and
Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his
wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and
told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young
savage--this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain's cabin.
They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But
like Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities,
Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily
gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at
bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a profound desire to learn
among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still
happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they
were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that
even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more
so, than all his father's heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag
Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to
Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also,
poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world
in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.
And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these
Christians, wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish.
Hence the queer ways about him, though now some time from home.
By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and
having a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and
gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered
no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather
Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled
throne of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he
would return,--as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the
nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in
all four oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed
iron was in lieu of a sceptre now.
I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future
movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation.
Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed
him of my intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most
promising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at
once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same
vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with
me, in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly
dip into the Potluck of both worlds. To all this I joyously
assented; for besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was
an experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great
usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the mysteries
of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant
seamen.
His story being ended with his pipe's last dying puff, Queequeg
embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the
light, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very
soon were sleeping. _
Read next: CHAPTER 13 Wheelbarrow.
Read previous: CHAPTER 11 Nightgown.
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