CHAPTER 11

  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 headboard 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 blankets 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

once love 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.