Chapter IV: 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-colored 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 favor to give me a good slippering for my
misbehavior; 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 bedside. 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 state -- neither caterpillar nor
butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness
in the strangest possible manner. 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.