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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!" _
Read next: CHAPTER 111 The Pacific.
Read previous: CHAPTER 109 Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
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