MOBY-DICK;
or, THE WHALE.
By Herman Melville
CHAPTER 13.
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 furnish 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 punchbowl;—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 bows 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 watch, and every
instant seemed on the point of snapping into splinters.
Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable of being done; those on deck rushed towards
the bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale.
In the midst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling
under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and
then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head,
and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe.
The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat,
Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap.
For three minutes or more he was seen swimming like a dog, throwing his long arms straight
out before him, and by turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam.
I looked at the grand and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved.
The greenhorn had gone down.
Shooting himself perpendicularly from the water, Queequeg, now took an instant’s glance
around him, and seeming to see just how matters were, dived down and disappeared.
A few minutes more, and he rose again, one arm still striking out, and with the other
dragging a lifeless form.
The boat soon picked them up.
The poor bumpkin was restored.
All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his pardon.
From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his
last long dive.
Was there ever such unconsciousness?
He did not seem to think that he at all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies.
He only asked for water—fresh water—something to wipe the brine off; that done, he put on
dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those
around him, seemed to be saying to himself—“It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians.
We cannibals must help these Christians.”