{"id":"01KF7FPQ2V552CTAGZQJ2G0XWX","cid":"bafkreidc63fsw7wr2ziduzyvujulpdg5e2kdkhfiyeb7mz474zy3emhqk4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":2840,"extracted_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:17.953Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 20","source_file":"01KESYVB66H8YEVTN88DWE9W8D","start_line":2782,"text":"sapling; even then, in Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong\r\ndesire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or\r\ntwo. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and\r\non the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of\r\nunconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal\r\nstuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he\r\nnourished in his untutored youth.\r\n\r\nA Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg sought a\r\npassage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of\r\nseamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father’s influence\r\ncould prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled\r\noff to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when\r\nshe quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a\r\nlow tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into\r\nthe water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with\r\nits prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and\r\nwhen the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her\r\nside; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe;\r\nclimbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the\r\ndeck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though\r\nhacked in pieces.\r\n\r\nIn vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a\r\ncutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and\r\nQueequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his\r\nwild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and\r\ntold him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage—this\r\nsea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain’s cabin. They put him down\r\namong the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter\r\ncontent to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained\r\nno seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of\r\nenlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom—so he told me—he\r\nwas actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the\r\narts whereby to make his people still happier than they were; and more\r\nthan that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of\r\nwhalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both\r\nmiserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father’s\r\nheathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the\r\nsailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they\r\nspent their wages in _that_ place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for\r\nlost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a\r\npagan.\r\n\r\nAnd thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,\r\nwore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer\r\nways about him, though now some time from home.\r\n\r\nBy hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and having\r\na coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he\r\nbeing very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not\r\nyet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians,\r\nhad unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty\r\npagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,—as\r\nsoon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he\r\nproposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They\r\nhad made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a\r\nsceptre now.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 20"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KF7FPMMNM5YQGSAV1J5A319H","peer_label":"Wheelbarrow","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KF7FPMMNM5YQGSAV1J5A319H","peer_label":"Wheelbarrow","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KF7FPKDT5SHSH1ZQV6ABHQCA","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"book","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KESYJX0Z6XE0HWTS5N3SDG0B","peer_label":"The Classics","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KF7FPQ1S5MSFNV6M9T15DQA4","peer_label":"Chunk 21","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KF7FPQ31X9FMTVYSCDG0X888","peer_label":"Chunk 19","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:18.597Z","ts":"2026-01-18T02:42:26.580Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KF7FCDA7SCSJ6A30TDPDSJQV"}}