Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the holdwere perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off.So, it being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper,disturbing the slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts;and from that black midnight sending those gigantic molesinto the daylight above. So deep did they go; and so ancient,and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons,that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone caskcontaining coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards,vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood.Tierce after tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef,and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted out,till at last the piled decks were hard to get about; and the hollowhull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty catacombs,and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted demijohn.Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotlein his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them then.
Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion,and fast bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever,which brought him nigh to his endless end.
Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown;dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain,the higher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg,who, as harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of theliving whale, but--as we have elsewhere seen--mount his dead backin a rolling sea; and finally descend into the gloom of the hold,and bitterly sweating all day in that subterraneous confinement,resolutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to their stowage.To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, so called.
Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled,you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered downupon him there; where, stripped to his woollen drawers,the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampnessand slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well.And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan;where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings,he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever;and at last, after some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock,close to the very sill of the door of death. How he wastedand wasted away in those few long-lingering days, till thereseemed but little left of him but his frame and tattooing.But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper,his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller;they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly butdeeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondroustestimony to that immortal health in him which could not die,or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as theygrow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding,like the rings of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named wouldsteal over you as you sat by the side of this waning savage,and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld who werebystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrousand fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all,alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an authorfrom the dead could adequately tell. So that--let us say it again--no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughtsthan those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the faceof poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock,and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest,and the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and highertowards his destined heaven.
Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself,what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curiousfavor he asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch,when the day was just breaking, and taking his hand,said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain littlecanoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle;and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who diedin Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancyof being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlikethe custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior,stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floatedaway to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believethat the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons,their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens;and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He added,that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock,according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vileto the death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like thoseof Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman,that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel;though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-wayadown the dim ages.
Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft,the carpenter was at once commanded to do Queequeg's bidding,whatever it might include. There was some heathenish,coffin-colored old lumber aboard, which, upon a long previous voyage,had been cut from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands,and from these dark planks the coffin was recommended to be made.No sooner was the carpenter apprised of the order, than takinghis rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent promptitudeof his character, proceeded into the forecastle and tookQueequeg's measure with great accuracy, regularly chalkingQueequeg's person as he shifted the rule.
"Ah! poor fellow! he'll have to die now," ejaculated theLong Island sailor.
Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sakeand general reference, now transferringly measured on itthe exact length the coffin was to be, and then made the transferpermanent by cutting two notches at its extremities.This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, and to work.
When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted,he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it,inquiring whether they were ready for it yet in that direction.
Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with whichthe people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg,to every one's consternation, commanded that the thing shouldbe instantly brought to him, nor was there any denying him;seeing that, of all mortals, some dying men are the most tyrannical;and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so littlefor evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffinwith an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon,had the wooden stock drawn from it, and then had the iron partplaced in the coffin along with one of the paddles of his boat.All by his own request, also, biscuits were then ranged roundthe sides within; a flask of fresh water was placed at the head,and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in the hold at the foot;and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a pillow,Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed,that he might make trial of its comforts, if any it had.He lay without moving a few minutes, then told one to goto his bag and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then crossinghis arms on his breast with Yojo between, he called forthe coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed over him.The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there layQueequeg in his coffin with little but his composed countenancein view. "Rarmai" (it will do; it is easy), he murmured at last,and signed to be replaced in his hammock.
But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by allthe while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings,took him by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.
"Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving?Where go ye now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilleswhere the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do onelittle errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who's now been missing long:I think he's in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him;for he must be very sad; for look! he's left his tambourine behind;--I found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I'll beatye your dying march."
"I have heard," murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, "that inviolent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues;and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out alwaysthat in their wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongue
shad been really spoken in their hearing by some lofty scholars.So, to my fond faith, poor Pip, in this strange sweetness ofhis lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes.Where learned he that, but there?--Hark! he speaks again;but more wildly now."
"Form two and two! Let's make a General of him! Ho, where'shis harpoon? Lay it across here.--Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza!Oh for a game cock now to sit upon his head and crow!Queequeg dies game!--mind ye that; Queequeg dies game!--take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies game!I say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died a coward;died all a'shiver;--out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip,tell all the Antilles he's a runaway; a coward, a coward,a coward! Tell them he jumped from a whale-boat! I'd neverbeat my tambourine over base Pip, and hail him General,if he were once more dying here. No, no! shame upon all cowards--shame upon them! Let'em go drown like Pip, that jumped froma whale-boat. Shame! shame!"
During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream.Pip was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.
But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death;now that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied;soon there seemed no need of the carpenter's box; and thereupon,when some expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance,said, that the cause of his sudden convalescence was this;--at a critical moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which hewas leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mind about dying:he could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether tolive or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure.He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg's conceit,that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him:nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable,unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized;that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing,generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well againin a day. So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength;and at length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days(but eating with a vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet,threw out his arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned alittle bit, and then springing into the head of his hoisted boat,and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight.
With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest;and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there.Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesquefigures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving,in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body.And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seerof his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had writtenout on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth,and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequegin his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous workin one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read,though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysterieswere therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the livingparchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wildexclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poorQueequeg--"Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!"