CHAPTER 12
Biographical
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the Westand South. It is not down on any map; true places never are.
When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlandsin a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he werea green sapling; even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul,lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendomthan a specimen whaler or two. His father was a High Chief,a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal sidehe boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors.There was excellent blood in his veins--royal stuff;though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensityhe nourished in his untutored youth.
A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg soughta passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her fullcomplement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the Kinghis father's influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow.Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which heknew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island.On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land,covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water.Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with itsprow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand;and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out;gained her side; with one backward dash of his foot capsizedand sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing himselfat full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there,and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended acutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King,and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness,and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented,and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage--this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain's cabin.They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him.But like Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities,Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he mighthappily gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen.For at bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a profounddesire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to makehis people still happier than they were; and more than that,still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemensoon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserableand wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father's heathens.Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the sailorsdid there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spenttheir wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost.Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.
And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish.Hence the queer ways about him, though now some time from home.
By hints I asked him whether he did not propose going back,and having a coronation; since he might now consider his fatherdead and gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts.He answered no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity,or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pureand undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him.But by and by, he said, he would return,--as soon as he felthimself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposedto sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans.They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron wasin lieu of a sceptre now.
I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching hisfuture movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation.Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informedhim of my intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the mostpromising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from.He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboardthe same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat,the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with bothmy hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds.To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection I nowfelt for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such,could not fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me,was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though wellacquainted with the sea, as known to merchant seamen.
His story being ended with his pipe's last dying puff,Queequeg embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine,and blowing out the light, we rolled over from each other,this way and that, and very soon were sleeping.