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
