CHAPTER 13
Wheelbarrow
Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a
barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade’s bill; using, however, my
comrade’s money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed
amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between
me and Queequeg— especially as Peter Coffin’s cock and bull stories about
him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom
I now companied with.
We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my
own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg’s canvas sack and hammock, away we
went down to “the Moss,” the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at
the wharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so
much— for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets,—
but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we heeded
them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg now
and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked him
why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all
whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he
replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular
affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in
many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales. In
short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmer’s
meadows armed with their own scythes—though in no wise obliged to
furnish them— even so, Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred
his own harpoon.
Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about
the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of
his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his
boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing—though in truth he
was entirely so, concerning the precise way in which to manage the barrow
—Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then shoulders the
barrow and marches up the wharf. “Why,” said I, “Queequeg, you might
have known better than that, one would think. Didn’t the people laugh?”
Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of
Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of
young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this
punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat
where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once touched at
Rokovoko, and its commander—from all accounts, a very stately
punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain— this commander was
invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg’s sister, a pretty young princess
just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at the
bride’s bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the
post of honor, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the
High Priest and his majesty the King, Queequeg’s father. Grace being said,
—for those people have their grace as well as we— though Queequeg told
me that unlike us, who at such times look downwards to our platters, they,
on the contrary, copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all
feasts—Grace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the
immemorial ceremony of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated and
consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates.
Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and
thinking himself—being Captain of a ship—as having plain precedence
over a mere island King, especially in the King’s own house— the Captain
coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punch bowl;— taking it I suppose
for a huge finger-glass. “Now,” said Queequeg, “what you tink now?—
Didn’t our people laugh?”
At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner.
Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one side, New Bedford
rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees all glittering in the clear,
cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her
wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and
safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and
coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all
betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and
long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins
a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the
intolerableness of all earthly effort.
Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little
Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings.
How I snuffed that Tartar air!—how I spurned that turnpike earth!— that
common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs;
and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no
records.
At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me.
His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed teeth. On,
on we flew, and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast;
ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways leaning,
we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts
buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes. So full of this reeling scene
were we, as we stood by the plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did
not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, a lubber-like assembly,
who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so companionable; as
though a white man were anything more dignified than a whitewashed
negro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who, by their
intense greenness, must have come from the heart and centre of all verdure.
Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him behind his
back. I thought the bumpkin’s hour of doom was come. Dropping his
harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost
miraculous dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into the air; then
slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with bursting
lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon him, lighted his
tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff.
“Capting! Capting! yelled the bumpkin, running toward that officer;
“Capting, Capting, here’s the devil.”
“Hallo, you sir,” cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking up to
Queequeg, “what in thunder do you mean by that? Don’t you know you
might have killed that chap?”
“What him say?” said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me.
“He say,” said I, “that you came near kill-e that man there,” pointing to
the still shivering greenhorn.
“Kill-e,” cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly
expression of disdain, “ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e so
small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!”
“Look you,” roared the Captain, “I’ll kill-e you, you cannibal, if you try
any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye.”
But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to mind
his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted the
weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to side,
completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck. The poor fellow
whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all hands
were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it, seemed
madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, almost in one ticking of
a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of snapping into splinters.
Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable of being done; those on
deck rushed toward the bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it were the
lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the midst of this consternation,
Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling under the path of the
boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and then
flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his
head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe.
The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing
away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side
with a long living arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he was seen
swimming like a dog, throwing his long arms straight out before him, and
by turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam. I looked
at the grand and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved. The greenhorn
had gone down. Shooting himself perpendicularly from the water,
Queequeg, now took an instant’s glance around him, and seeming to see just
how matters were, dived down and disappeared. A few minutes more, and
he rose again, one arm still striking out, and with the other dragging a
lifeless form. The boat soon picked them up. The poor bumpkin was
restored. All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his
pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor
Queequeg took his last long dive.
Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that he at
all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies. He
only asked for water—fresh water—something to wipe the brine off; that
done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the
bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be saying to
himself—”It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals
must help these Christians.”
