Chapter XII: BIOGRAPHICAL
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, 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 ringbolt
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.