Chapter Chapter 4 · The Counterpane.

Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown

over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost

thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of

odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his

tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no

two parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his

keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt

sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this same arm of his, I

say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork

quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I

could hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues

together; and it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I

could tell that Queequeg was hugging me.

My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a

child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me;

whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The

circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other—I

think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little

sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other,

was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,—my

mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to

bed, though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st June,

the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But

there was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the

third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time,

and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.

I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse

before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the small

of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun

shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the

streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse

and worse—at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my

stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at

her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good

slippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but condemning me to

lie abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and

most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For

several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than

I have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes.

At last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and

slowly waking from it—half steeped in dreams—I opened my eyes, and the

before sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt

a shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and

nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine.

My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable,

silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely

seated by my bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there,

frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet

ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid

spell would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided

away from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it

all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in

confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I

often puzzle myself with it.

Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the

supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to

those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg’s pagan arm

thrown round me. But at length all the past night’s events soberly

recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to

the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm—unlock his

bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly,

as though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse

him—“Queequeg!”—but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over, my

neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a

slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk

sleeping by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A

pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the

broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! “Queequeg!—in the name of

goodness, Queequeg, wake!” At length, by dint of much wriggling, and

loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his

hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in

extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself

all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in

bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if

he did not altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim

consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over

him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings

now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a creature. When, at

last, his mind seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow,

and he became, as it were, reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon

the floor, and by certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that,

if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me to dress

afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg,

under the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the

truth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you

will; it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this

particular compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much

civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness;

staring at him from the bed, and watching all his toilette motions; for

the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding. Nevertheless,

a man like Queequeg you don’t see every day, he and his ways were well

worth unusual regarding.

He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall

one, by the by, and then—still minus his trowsers—he hunted up his

boots. What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his

next movement was to crush himself—boots in hand, and hat on—under the

bed; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he

was hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I

ever heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his

boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition

stage—neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized

to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His

education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not

been a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled

himself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage,

he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. At

last, he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over

his eyes, and began creaking and limping about the room, as if, not

being much accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide

ones—probably not made to order either—rather pinched and tormented him

at the first go off of a bitter cold morning.

Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the

street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view

into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that

Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on;

I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and

particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He

complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the

morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg, to my

amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his

chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a

piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water

and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept

his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed

corner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it

a little on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the

wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks.

Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers’s best cutlery with a

vengeance. Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came

to know of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how

exceedingly sharp the long straight edges are always kept.

The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of

the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his

harpoon like a marshal’s baton.