Chapter 15.00: CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.

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CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.
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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
punchbowl;—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 bows 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.”