Kabanata Kabanata 110 · Queequeg in His Coffin.

Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold

were 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 moles into 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

cask containing 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 hollow hull 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 Aristotle in 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 the living whale, but—as

we have elsewhere seen—mount his dead back in 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 down upon him there; where,

stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about

amid that dampness and 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 wasted and wasted away in those few

long-lingering days, till there seemed 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 but

deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony

to that immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. And

like circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his

eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity. An awe

that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of

this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any

beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly

wondrous and 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 author from the dead could

adequately tell. So that—let us say it again—no dying Chaldee or Greek

had higher and holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you

saw creeping over the face of 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

higher towards 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 curious favour 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 little canoes of dark wood, like the rich

war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all

whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes,

and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was

not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead

warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated

away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that 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 vile to the death-devouring sharks.

No: he desired a canoe like those of 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-way adown 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-coloured 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 taking his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent

promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took

Queequeg’s measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg’s

person as he shifted the rule.

“Ah! poor fellow! he’ll have to die now,” ejaculated the Long Island

sailor.

Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general

reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the

coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent 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 which the people

on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one’s

consternation, commanded that the thing should be 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 little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be

indulged.

Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with an

attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock

drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along

with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also,

biscuits were then ranged round the 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 go to his bag and bring out his

little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo

between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed

over him. The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there lay

Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in

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 all

this 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 Antilles where

the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little

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 beat ye your

dying march.”

“I have heard,” murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, “that in

violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; and

that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their

wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken

in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor

Pip, in this strange sweetness of his 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’s his

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 never beat 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 from a 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 he was leaving undone;

and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet,

he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live 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 again in 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 a little 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

grotesque figures 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 seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written

out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a

mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in

his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one

volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own

live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore

destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon

they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought

it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his,

when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg—“Oh,

devilish tantalization of the gods!”