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 farmers’ 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 brows 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 towards 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 towards 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.”