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 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 the 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 stage- neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just

enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest

possible manners. 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.