CHAPTER 11
Nightgown
We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals,and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his browntattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back;so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when, at last,by reason of our confabulations, what little nappishness remainedin us altogether departed, and we felt like getting up again,though day-break was yet some way down the future.
Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbentposition began to grow wearisome, and by little and little wefound ourselves sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us,leaning against the headboard with our four knees drawn upclose together, and our two noses bending over them, as ifour knee-pans were warming-pans. We felt very nice and snug,the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed outof bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room.The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth,some small part of you must be cold, for there is no qualityin this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that youare all over comfortable, and have been so a long time,then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if,like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crownof your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the generalconsciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnishedwith a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich.For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothingbut the blankets between you and your snugness and the coldof the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm sparkin the heart of an arctic crystal.
We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time,when all at once I thought I would open my eyes; for whenbetween sheets, whether by day or by night, and whetherasleep or awake, I have a way of always keeping my eyes shut,in order the more to concentrate the snugness of being in bed.Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except hiseyes be closed; as if, darkness were indeed the proper elementof our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasantand self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloomof the unilluminated twelve-o'clock-at-night, I experienceda disagreeable revulsion. Nor did I at all object to the hintfrom Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light,seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a strongdesire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it said,that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smokingin the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudicesgrow when love once comes to bend them. For now I likednothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed,because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then.I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord's policy of insurance.I was only alive to the condensed confidential comfortablenessof sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passedthe Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grewover us a blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flameof the new-lit lamp.
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savageaway to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spokeof his native island; and, eager to hear his history,I begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly complied.Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words,yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiarwith his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the wholestory such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.