NIGHTGOWN.
We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and
Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs
over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free
and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what
little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like
getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.
Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position
began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves
sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the
head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two
noses bending over them, as if our knee-pans were warming-pans. We felt
very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors;
indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the
room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some
small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world
that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have
been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any
more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or
the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the
general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.
For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a
fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the
height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket
between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there
you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.
We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all
at once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets,
whether by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a
way of always keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate
the snugness of being in bed. Because no man can ever feel his own
identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed
the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to
our clayey part. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own
pleasant and self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer
gloom of the unilluminated twelve-o’clock-at-night, I experienced
a disagreeable revulsion. Nor did I at all object to the hint from
Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light, seeing that we
were so wide awake; and besides he felt a strong desire to have a few
quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it said, that though I had felt
such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before,
yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes
to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg
smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene
household joy then. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord’s
policy of insurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential
comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.
With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the
Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue
hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to
far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island;
and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He
gladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of
his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar
with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story
such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.