Bab Bab 12 · Biographical.

Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and

South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.

When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a

grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green

sapling; even then, in Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong

desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or

two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and

on the maternal side he 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 propensity he

nourished in his untutored youth.

A Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg sought a

passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of

seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father’s influence

could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled

off to a distant strait, which he knew 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

its prow 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 capsized and sank his canoe;

climbed up the chains; and throwing himself at 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 a

cutlass 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 might happily gain the power of

enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom—so he told me—he

was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the

arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were; and more

than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of

whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both

miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father’s

heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the

sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they

spent their 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 father dead 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 pure and undefiled throne of thirty

pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,—as

soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he

proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They

had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a

sceptre now.

I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future

movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon

this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my

intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port

for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to

accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the

same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my

every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of

both worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection

I now felt 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 well acquainted

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.