CHAPTER 13
Wheelbarrow
Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed headto 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 suddenfriendship which had sprung up between me and Queequeg--especially as Peter Coffin's cock and bull stories about himhad previously so much alarmed me concerning the very personwhom I now companied with.
We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own poorcarpet-bag, and Queequeg's canvas sack and hammock, away we went downto "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 heededthem not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequegnow 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 wastrue 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 manyinland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmer's meadows armedwith 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 funnystory about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen.It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his ship, it seems, had lenthim one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding house.Not to seem ignorant about the thing--though in truth he wasentirely so, concerning the precise way in which to managethe 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 islandof Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrantwater of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl;and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament onthe braided mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchantship 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 allthe 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 betweenthe 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 lookdownwards 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 ceremonyof the island; that is, dipping his consecrated and consecratingfingers 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 plainprecedence 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 allglittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of caskson casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wanderingwhale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others camea sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forgesto 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 littleMoss 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 heelsand hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which willpermit 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 theplunging bowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeeringglances of the passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who marvelledthat two fellow beings should be so companionable; as thougha white man were anything more dignified than a whitewashed negro.But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who, by their intensegreenness, must have come from the heart and centre of all verdure.Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him behindhis 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 upbodily 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 itto me for a puff.
"Capting! Capting! yelled the bumpkin, running toward 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 anunearthly 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 Captainto mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail hadparted the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flyingfrom side to side, completely sweeping the entire after partof the deck. The poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly,was swept overboard; all hands were in a panic; and to attemptsnatching at the boom to stay it, seemed madness. It flew fromright 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 toward the bows, and stood eyeing the boomas if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the midstof 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 otherlike 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 wereclearing 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 turnsrevealing 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 perpendicularlyfrom the water, Queequeg, now to
ok 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 stillstriking 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 poorQueequeg took his last long dive.
Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that he atall deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies. He onlyasked for water--fresh water--something to wipe the brine off;that done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning againstthe bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be sayingto himself--"It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians.We cannibals must help these Christians."
CHAPTER 14
Nantucket
Moby Dick; Or, The Whale Page 14