CHAPTER 4
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 misbehaviour: 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
sunlit 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 bed-side. 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.
