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Table of Contents
Chapter IV
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 was of
patchwork, full of odd little parti-colored 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, partly
lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, 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. My
sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a child, I
well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me; whether it was a
reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance was this.
I had been cutting up some caper or other --I think it was trying to crawl up
the chimney, as i had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my
stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me
to bed supperless, --my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and
packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon of the
21st June, the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully.
But there was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the
third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time, and
with a bitter sigh got between the sheets. I lay there dismally calculating
that sixteen entire hours must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection.
Sixteen hours in ..
2 bed! the small of my back ached to
think of it. And it was so light too; the sun shining in at the window, and a
great rattling of coaches in the streets, and the sound of gay voices all over
the house. I felt worse and worse --at last I got up, dressed, and softly
going down in my stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw
myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favor to give me a good
slippering for my misbehavior; anything indeed but condemning me to lie abed
such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most
conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For several
hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I have ever
done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have
fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it --half
steeped in dreams --I opened my eyes, and the before sun-lit room was now
wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my
frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural
hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the
nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged,
seemed closely seated by my bedside. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay
there, frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet
ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell
would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from
me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for days
and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts to
explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle myself with it.
Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the supernatural
hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to those which I
experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg's pagan arm thrown round me. But
at length all the past night's events soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed
reality, and then I lay only alive to the comical predicament. For though 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
now strove to rouse him -- ..
3 Queequeg! --but his only answer was a
snore. I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar;
and suddenly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay
the tomahawk sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were a hatchet-faced
baby. 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 loud and
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 a Newfoundland
dog 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 knowing something about me seemed slowly
dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious
misgivings now, and bent upon 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 at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall
one, by the by, and then --still minus his trowsers -- 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 ..
4 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 manner. 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. 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. Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers's best
cutlery 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. ..
5 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. ..
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