الفصل الفصل 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.”