Ishmael explains the book’s purpose, then proposes a smoke. The shared pipe thaws any remaining ice between them. When it finishes, Queequeg presses his forehead to Ishmael’s, clasps his waist, and declares them married—bosom friends who would die for each other.
After supper, Queequeg gives Ishmael his embalmed head and divides his silver, pushing half into Ishmael’s pockets despite protest. When he prepares to worship his idol, Ishmael hesitates—then reasons that true worship means doing God’s will, which is loving one’s neighbor. He joins Queequeg before the little god, offering burnt biscuit and kissing its nose.
They undress and climb into bed, at peace. In the darkness, they talk confidentially, like honeymooners, their hearts open to each other in this strange new union.
We had lain in bed chatting and napping, but soon grew wakeful and sat up with our knees drawn close together to preserve warmth in the cold room. Ishmael reflects that true comfort relies on contrast, arguing that one must be slightly chilled to fully appreciate the snugness of the blankets. He opens his eyes to the dark room, experiencing a momentary revulsion at leaving the self-created darkness of his mind for the physical gloom. Queequeg suggests lighting a pipe, and Ishmael finds his previous prejudices against smoking in bed have vanished due to their newfound affection. Love has bent his stiff morals, allowing him to find only condensed confidential comfortableness in sharing the pipe. Under the canopy of blue smoke, Queequeg begins to speak of his native island, prompting Ishmael to listen eagerly for the story.
Queequeg hails from Rokovoko, an unmapped island where his father ruled as High King. Even as a boy, he burned to see Christendom and carry enlightenment home. When a Sag Harbor vessel refused him passage, he ambushed it from hiding, capsized his canoe, seized a ring-bolt, and defied every threat until the captain relented. He accepted a common sailor’s berth to learn Christian arts.
But Christendom shattered his hopes. In Sag Harbor and Nantucket, he watched sailors drink away wages in squalor. Christians proved worse than heathens; he would die a pagan. Asked about his throne, he admits Christianity has stained him, unfitted him for the pure seat of thirty pagan kings. His sceptre now is a harpoon iron.
When Ishmael confesses his whaling designs, Queequeg grasps his hands: they will ship together, share every hazard. Ishmael joyfully accepts—his merchant-seaman’s knowledge wedded to a harpooneer’s skill. The pipe dies. Queequeg embraces him, presses forehead to forehead, blows out the light. They sleep, bound for Nantucket.
Using Queequeg’s funds to settle their accounts, Ishmael and his companion secure a wheelbarrow to haul their belongings down to the packet schooner. Queequeg refuses to leave behind his personal harpoon, cherishing the weapon as a trusted partner in past battles. As they navigate the streets, onlookers gawk at the intimacy between the white man and the islander. Queequeg passes the journey by recounting his early, baffling encounters with Western civilization, including a mishap with a wheelbarrow and the story of a ship captain who once insulted his hosts by washing his hands in a sacred ceremonial bowl.
Once the vessel departs, Ishmael inhales the sharp sea air, feeling a profound sense of liberation as they leave the common, dusty roads behind. He contemplates the infinite loop of whaling voyages, where the conclusion of one dangerous journey merely heralds the beginning of another. As the schooner picks up speed, the passengers mock the unlikely pair. Queequeg notices a young country bumpkin mimicking him and, dropping his weapon, hoists the lad into the air before setting him back on the deck. The Captain angrily intervenes, threatening the harpooneer, but Queequeg remains unimpressed, declaring that the man is too insignificant a creature to be worth killing.
Disaster suddenly strikes when the mainsail sheet snaps, sending the massive boom swinging violently across the deck. The mocking greenhorn is swept into the ocean, and the crew stands paralyzed by the thrashing spar. With incredible agility, Queequeg drops to the deck, secures the rope, and lashes the boom to the bulwarks. Seeing the passenger floundering in the icy water, he dives overboard, vanishing beneath the waves until he resurfaces with the unconscious man in tow. The crew hauls them aboard, and the Captain, humbled, offers a full apology. Ishmael binds himself to Queequeg with unwavering loyalty, while the hero casually dries off, lights his pipe, and observes that in this shared existence, savages must often lend a hand to civilized men.
After a smooth passage, Ishmael arrives in Nantucket, describing it as a barren, sandy outpost completely surrounded by the ocean, contrasting its aridity with the fertile landscapes of the mainland. He recounts the traditional legend of the island’s settlement, where an eagle stole an Indian infant, leading the parents to discover the land and find only the child’s skeleton in an ivory casket. Ishmael traces the Nantucketers’ evolution from digging in the sand for clams to launching a global navy, depicting their inevitable rise to conquer the sea. He argues that while other seamen merely traverse or plunder the surface, the Nantucketer alone resides and draws his life from the deep, treating the ocean as his private plantation. The chapter concludes with a poetic image of the Nantucketer sleeping on the waves, as at home on the water as a prairie cock on land or a gull on the billows.
Guided by Peter Coffin’s convoluted directions, Ishmael and Queequeg argue over starboard and larboard, beating about the dark streets and waking peaceable inhabitants before finally locating the Try Pots inn. The entrance is marked by two enormous black pots suspended from a cross-tree that resembles a gallows, prompting Ishmael to stare with vague misgiving—one horn for Queequeg, one for him. A Coffin for an innkeeper, tombstones in the chapel, and now a gallows: are these hints of Tophet?
They encounter Mrs. Hussey, a freckled woman in yellow hair and gown, scolding a man in a purple shirt. She postpones her wrath to ask the only question that matters: “Clam or Cod?” Ishmael, misunderstanding, tests the kitchen by ordering cod after the first savory bowl arrives, and is rewarded with a second delicious chowder.
The Try Pots lives up to its name. Chowder for breakfast, dinner, and supper, till you expect fish-bones through your clothes. The ground is paved with clam-shells, Mrs. Hussey wears a necklace of codfish vertebra, the account books are bound in shark-skin, and even the milk tastes fishy—thanks to Hosea’s brindled cow feeding on remnants.
When they retire, Mrs. Hussey demands Queequeg’s harpoon. Ever since young Stiggs returned from an unlucky voyage and was found dead in his room with his own weapon in his side, she allows no such dangerous iron in the bedrooms. Before sleeping, Ishmael orders both clam and cod chowder for breakfast, with smoked herring for variety.
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