Chapter 112.00: CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin.

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CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
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Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold were
perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it being calm
weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the
huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight sending those
gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they go; and so
ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons,
that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask containing
coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards, vainly warning
the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after tierce, too, of
water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of
hoops, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks were hard to get
about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over
empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted
demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all
Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them
then.

Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast
bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh to
his endless end.

Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown;
dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the higher
you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as harpooneer,
must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but—as we have
elsewhere seen—mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and finally
descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all day in that
subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and
see to their stowage. To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are the
holders, so called.

Poor Queequeg! When the ship was about half disembowelled, you should have
stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where, stripped
to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that
dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well.
And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan; where,
strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he caught a terrible
chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after some days’ suffering,
laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill of the door of death. How
he wasted and wasted away in those few long-lingering days, till there
seemed but little left of him but his frame and tattooing. But as all else
in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless,
seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of
lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a
wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die, or
be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter,
expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of
Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by
the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as
any beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly
wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And
the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all
with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could
adequately tell. So that—let us say it again—no dying Chaldee
or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious
shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay
in his swaying hammock, and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to
his final rest, and the ocean’s invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and
higher towards his destined heaven.

Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself, what
he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favour he asked. He
called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was just
breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had chanced
to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his
native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died
in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy of
being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of
his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in
his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes;
for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond
all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with
the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He
added, that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock,
according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the
death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket,
all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat
these coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that involved but
uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim ages.

Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter was
at once commanded to do Queequeg’s bidding, whatever it might include.
There was some heathenish, coffin-coloured old lumber aboard, which, upon
a long previous voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal groves of the
Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the coffin was recommended to
be made. No sooner was the carpenter apprised of the order, than taking
his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent promptitude of his
character, proceeded into the forecastle and took Queequeg’s measure with
great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg’s person as he shifted the
rule.

“Ah! Poor fellow! He’ll have to die now,” ejaculated the Long Island
sailor.

Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general
reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the coffin
was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches at
its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, and to
work.

When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he
lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring whether
they were ready for it yet in that direction.

Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the people on
deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one’s
consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to
him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some
dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly
trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.

Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with an
attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock drawn
from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along with one of
the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also, biscuits were then
ranged round the sides within: a flask of fresh water was placed at the
head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in the hold at the foot;
and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now
entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial of its
comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a few minutes, then told
one to go to his bag and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his
arms on his breast with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch
he called it) to be placed over him. The head part turned over with a
leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his
composed countenance in view. “Rarmai” (it will do; it is easy), he
murmured at last, and signed to be replaced in his hammock.

But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all this
while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings, took him by
the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.

“Poor rover! Will ye never have done with all this weary roving? Where go
ye now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where the
beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little errand for
me? Seek out one Pip, who’s now been missing long: I think he’s in those
far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; for he must be very sad;
for look! He’s left his tambourine behind;—I found it. Rig-a-dig,
dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I’ll beat ye your dying march.”

“I have heard,” murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, “that in
violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; and
that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly
forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken in their
hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor Pip, in this
strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all our
heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there? —Hark! He speaks
again: but more wildly now.”

“Form two and two! Let’s make a General of him! Ho, where’s his harpoon?
Lay it across here. —Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Huzza! Oh for a game cock
now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game! —mind ye that;
Queequeg dies game! —take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies game! I
say; game, game, game! But base little Pip, he died a coward; died all
a’shiver;—out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip, tell all the
Antilles he’s a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he jumped
from a whale-boat! I’d never beat my tambourine over base Pip, and hail
him General, if he were once more dying here. No, no! Shame upon all
cowards—shame upon them! Let ’em go drown like Pip, that jumped from
a whale-boat. Shame! Shame!”

During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip was
led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.

But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now that
his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon there
seemed no need of the carpenter’s box: and thereupon, when some expressed
their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the cause of his
sudden convalescence was this;—at a critical moment, he had just
recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone; and therefore
had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet, he averred. They
asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign
will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg’s
conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not
kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable,
unintelligent destroyer of that sort.

Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized;
that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing, generally
speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day. So, in good
time my Queequeg gained strength; and at length after sitting on the
windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a vigorous appetite) he
suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms and legs, gave himself a
good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then springing into the head of
his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a
fight.

With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and
emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there. Many
spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque
figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his
rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this
tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island,
who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete
theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of
attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to
unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even
himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these
mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the
living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the
last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild
exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor
Queequeg—“Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!”