CHAPTER 12

  Biographical

  Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West

and South. It is not down on any map; true places never are.

  When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in

a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green

sapling; even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong

desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler

or two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High

Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives

of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins-

royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity

he nourished in his untutored youth.

  A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg sought a

passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement

of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's

influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe,

he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass

through when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef;

on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that

grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these

thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle

low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he

darted out; gained her side; with one backward dash of his foot

capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing

himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there,

and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.

  In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a

cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and

Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his

wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and

told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage-

this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain's cabin. They put

him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like

Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities,

Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily

gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at

bottom- so he told me- he was actuated by a profound desire to learn

among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still

happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they

were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that

even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more

so, than all his father's heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor;

and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket,

and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also, poor

Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in all

meridians; I'll die a pagan.

  And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these

Christians, wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish.

Hence the queer ways about him, though now some time from home.

  By hints I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and

having a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and

gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered

no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather

Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled

throne of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he

would return,- as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the

nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in

all four oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed

iron was in lieu of a sceptre now.

  I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future

movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation.

Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him

of my intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most

promising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at

once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same

vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me,

in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly

dip into the Potluck of both worlds. To all this I joyously

assented; for besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was an

experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great

usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the

mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as known to

merchant seamen.

  His story being ended with his pipe's last dying puff, Queequeg

embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the

light, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very

soon were sleeping.