{"id":"01KJNXJQTYSQAWN80NDTX4M53P","cid":"bafkreif4uitfavqzujc35ueirrjspf2lte6gzth2fuegsewgpuh3k3xlg4","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":150663,"char_start":142669,"chunk_index":20,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1999,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the\r\nunilluminated twelve-o’clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable\r\nrevulsion. Nor did I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that\r\nperhaps it were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wide\r\nawake; and besides he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs\r\nfrom his Tomahawk. Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong\r\nrepugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before, yet see how\r\nelastic 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\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\nI asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future\r\nmovements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon\r\nthis, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my\r\nintention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port\r\nfor an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to\r\naccompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the\r\nsame watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my\r\nevery hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of\r\nboth worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection\r\nI now felt for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such,\r\ncould not fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was\r\nwholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted\r\nwith the sea, as known to merchant seamen.\r\n\r\nHis story being ended with his pipe’s last dying puff, Queequeg\r\nembraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the\r\nlight, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon\r\nwere sleeping.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.\r\n\r\nNext morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber,\r\nfor a block, I settled my own and comrade’s bill; using, however, my\r\ncomrade’s money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed\r\namazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between\r\nme and Queequeg—especially as Peter Coffin’s cock and bull stories\r\nabout him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person\r\nwhom I now companied with.\r\n\r\nWe borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own\r\npoor carpet-bag, and Queequeg’s canvas sack and hammock, away we went\r\ndown to “the Moss,” the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the\r\nwharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so\r\nmuch—for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their\r\nstreets,—but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we\r\nheeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg\r\nnow and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I\r\nasked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and\r\nwhether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in\r\nsubstance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet\r\nhe had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of\r\nassured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate\r\nwith the hearts of whales."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKSZYY4PZZGTPZ89W34AF","peer_label":"narrator","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKXNA6Q7NV244AJQKVXKZ","peer_label":"queequeg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKZYAV0YWA03F1ZPJWJ8N","peer_label":"rokovoko","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"island","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM06B2ZB4VQ44PAZJX43Z","peer_label":"nantucket","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"island","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM0PREARAKMKHVKRFFKP3","peer_label":"queequegs harpoon","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"weapon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM03P1WXC3TXP0PY90H8T","peer_label":"high priest queequegs uncle","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKZY0VG6NV5AJ34T6JTJW","peer_label":"high chief queequegs father","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM01JM3CMY1PTY5P40Q3K","peer_label":"christendom","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM0GTT3812X6SM067JEHY","peer_label":"captain sag harbor ship","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM06K58AG90811V0KZESH","peer_label":"sag harbor ship","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM1KCN5V1XV1XXBTASGQ5","peer_label":"quiet puffs","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM0N0C8EVKNKVX985NJB0","peer_label":"czar peter","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM0B7ZQKCB49M06FG8ZP0","peer_label":"tomahawk pipe","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM0WR19MFS26894J7SJ1R","peer_label":"sag harbor","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"settlement","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM0VST02CBD5RFKM3QDN6","peer_label":"chapter 12 biographical","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"chapter","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM268QJYG50XFH3QJ2VPN","peer_label":"whaleman","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM2DDTH9HZKSAHM7WD52H","peer_label":"the moss","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"packet_schooner","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM2E69F8JQ5WFQY6FDVMX","peer_label":"hint from queequeg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM2C9HKH6JXCNDC1EF7YT","peer_label":"nantucket packet schooner","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM1JY61FTG36E9HP0Z97S","peer_label":"peter coffin","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM2BJNKCF2GBQDKNN442K","peer_label":"chapter 13 wheelbarrow","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"chapter","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM28TTW3WW1365YSBNAMM","peer_label":"harpooneer","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM3WYPSR52ZFW1Z419CQ7","peer_label":"hearts of whales","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:02.628Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.614Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:02:04.134Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}