{"id":"01KFNR871W01RAZ1TY3VAS0K6F","cid":"bafkreidi5zqdorubwoqpshf7pnhlyk3elaf2c3kfqw5xsmbdbyhwsjkcgu","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":2804,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:01.904Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 0","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":2756,"text":"elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.\r\nFor now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me,\r\neven in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy\r\nthen. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord’s policy of\r\ninsurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential\r\ncomfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.\r\nWith our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the\r\nTomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue\r\nhanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.\r\n\r\nWhether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to\r\nfar distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island;\r\nand, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He\r\ngladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of\r\nhis words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar\r\nwith his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story\r\nsuch as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 12. Biographical.\r\n\r\nQueequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and\r\nSouth. It is not down in any map; true places never are.\r\n\r\nWhen a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a\r\ngrass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green\r\nsapling; 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","title":"Chunk 0"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84CMXKRHHR3SS6XGH875","peer_label":"Chapter 12. Biographical","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84CMXKRHHR3SS6XGH875","peer_label":"Chapter 12. Biographical","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR871J5M7KR3X20R2KYPBJ","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:02.647Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:14.936Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}