Zomby Dick, or the Undead Whale Read online

  But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days’ old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons.

  I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime—to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers, he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little mannikin. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.

  All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which I had so long been bound.

  But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say was a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of strangely fragrant smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.

  Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning.

  “Who-e debel you?”—he at last said—“you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e!” And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark.

  “Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I. “Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!”

  “Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or damn-ee, I kill-ee!” again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered hot ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room, light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.

  “Don’t be afraid now,” said he, grinning again, “Queequeg here wouldn’t harm a hair of your head.”

  “Stop your grinning,” shouted I, “and why didn’t you tell me that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?”

  “I thought ye know’d it; didn’t I tell ye, he was a-peddlin’ heads around town?—but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here—you sabbee me, I sabbee you—this man sleepee you—you sabbee?”

  “Me sabbee plenty,” grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting up in bed. “You gettee in,” he added, motioning to me with the tomahawk and throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way.

  I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him; mayhap more so. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

  “Landlord,” said I, “tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don’t fancy having a man smoking in bed with me; it’s dangerous. Besides, I wager you ain’t insured.”

  This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned me to get into bed—rolling over to one side as much as to say, “I won’t touch a leg of ye.”

  “Good night, landlord,” said I, “you may go.”

  I turned in, and slept a sweet dreamless sleep; for that horrid repeating nightmare stalking my sleep these past two years was entirely absent. What wonder that such a nothingness could be so blissful. O death!, where is thy sting?

  Chapter

  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 of his muscled limb was of patchwork, full of odd little parti-coloured 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, 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.

  At length, after some befuddled puzzlement at my present predicament, all the past night’s events soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to the comical predicament. I lay still for a moment upon realizing that my dreams were, for the first time in over two years, not populated with diseased and stinking horrors that buried me with their numbers. I woke screaming not once all night. Could it have been the presence of this tattooed bedfellow that drove off those dreams as the giant hound drove wolves from Irish sheep? It did appear so, but be that as it may, I was now awake and began to feel more and more that this harpooneer’s arm across me was less and less a sort of comforter. I know not of what comely cannibal he dreamed, yet he held him or her tightly.

  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 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 felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the comforter that was no comfort now, there lay the tomahawk, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. This Queequeg is even more careful than I, for my axe stands in the corner, ready to hand, but not so ready as this! 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 no small amount of loud, 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 that aforementioned wolfhound 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 kno
wing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him.

  Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings now, and bent my will to 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 by first donning his beaver top-hat, a very tall one, by the by, and then—still minus his trousers—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 state—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, and then his head! 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 and then his head, carefully avoiding the topknot. Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers’s best cutlery[1] 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.

  [1]Joseph Roger’s & Sons, a well-known cutlery company in New Sheffield, PA, produces the very finest knives, harpoons, and other useful edged weapons for the efficient slaughter of both whales and zombies.

  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.

  Chapter

  Breakfast

  Marveling again at the rest a full night of sleep free of dreams plagued by all that gore and guilt may provide, I clambered from the bed refreshed and readied for the coming day, descending afterward into the bar-room where I accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him, though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my bedfellow. A small penny to pay for dreamless sleep.

  And still more: a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and in these times rather too scarce a good thing, the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for. Remember well that no zomby has ever been known to laugh, though he Quickened from the liveliest jester ever to catch the pestilence.

  The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.

  You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This young fellow’s healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly bleached withal; he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed like the Andes’ western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates, zone by zone.

  What is more than passing strange was the truth that, being long at sea, none of these seamen had first hand knowledge of the zomby menace that had threatened us landlubbers these three years past. They had an easy, casual air about them that showed a relaxed countenance incapable of any man who had faced the unblinking stare of even one of the undead. Enough, Ishmael, I told myself; here comes the landlord, and breakfast should clear these cogitations from your countenance.

  “Grub, ho!” cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to breakfast.

  They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though: Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the very heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo’s performances—this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had anywhere.

  These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen!

  But as for Queequeg—why, Queequeg sat there among them—at the head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his bringing hi
s harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him. But that was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows that in most people’s estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.

  We will not speak of all Queequeg’s peculiarities here; how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll, my Danish axe—Big Blackie by name—strapped within easy reach over my shoulder, its little brother, a hatchet of similar construction, a pleasantly grim weight at my hip.

  Big Blackie has become a storied weapon among the Militia, and even beyond, and its design much copied; but the black axe and its smaller brother were the grand progenitors, quench-forged of high-carbon steel to my bidding, the design dreamt in a laudanum dream. Soon enough I hoped to lay them aside for my whaling voyage, and thereby be quit of them and all they betokened, but not ere I boarded whatever Nantucket-bound barque awaited.

  When one walks about a town, even within a walled city or garden, if one would at the very least appear wise, one carries a weapon. In your walled Manhattoes you may see some dandies who choose to go out and about without protection, but these rare poltroons will soon subtract themselves from the world as penance for their foolishness; there is no telling from what quarter the zomby may come. Therefore, in my no small experience, I find it best to go out amply prepared. Hence the Danish axe at my back and the heavy hatchet at my hip, both in the style of the broad axe, that cleaver of cylinders, whether neck or tree.