Call me Ishmael. Years ago, finding myself poor and aimless on land, I decided to sail and view the watery world. This is my method for curing melancholy and regulating my blood. Whenever my mouth grows grim, or my soul feels like a damp, drizzly November, I know it is time to leave. The urge becomes undeniable when I pause before coffin before warehouses, trail behind funerals, or feel a manic impulse to knock hats off in the street. Going to sea is my alternative to suicide. While Cato died on his sword with a flourish, I quietly board a ship. This impulse is not unique; almost all men feel a magnetic pull toward the ocean.
In calm weather the crew excavated the ship’s lower tiers, hoisting ancient casks into daylight until the decks choked with stores and the hollow hull echoed like catacombs. The corroded, weedy puncheons suggested a buried age—Noah’s flood recovered. The ship reeled top-heavy, vulnerable to any squall, while far below, Queequeg worked in darkness.
The harpooneer’s fever rose from the very labor that sustained the ship. Crawling amid hold-slime in woolen drawers, he caught a chill that collapsed into mortal illness. Within days he lay wasted in his hammock, nothing left of him but frame and tattooing—yet his eyes grew fuller, taking on a strange softness that suggested an immortal health no sickness could touch. An awe stole over those who watched him, as if the drawing near of Death had brought some last revelation.
The crew had given him up. But Queequeg, facing death, made one request: a coffin shaped like the dark canoes of Nantucket, recalling his native custom of sending warriors to float toward the starry archipelagoes where sea and heaven interflow. He could not endure the thought of burial at sea—tossed to sharks in his hammock. A keel-less canoe-coffin would carry him down the dim ages.
The carpenter received his orders with indifferent promptitude, chalking the dying man’s dimensions with professional accuracy. From dark lumber cut in the Lackaday islands he built the coffin, driving the last nail and planing the lid. When the crew protested its presence on deck, Queequeg commanded the box brought to him—dying men must be indulged in their final tyranny.
He inspected his coffin with deliberate attention, then arranged his effects within: harpoon iron, paddle, biscuits, water flask, a bag of hold-earth, sailcloth pillow. He asked to be lifted inside, settled himself with Yojo clasped to his chest, and called for the lid to close. His composed face visible through the open head-piece, he murmured approval.
Pip appeared at the coffin’s side, tambourine in hand, sobbing. He begged Queequeg to seek the missing Pip in the sweet Antilles, then his madness swelled into a wild funeral march—Queequeg dies game!—that spiraled into self-loathing as Pip condemned his own cowardice. Starbuck saw in these ravings a heavenly voucher. Throughout, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, dreaming.
Then, having made every preparation for death, Queequeg suddenly rallied. He had remembered a duty ashore left undone; he had changed his mind about dying. To live or die was a matter of sovereign will—mere sickness could not kill a man who resolves to live. Within days he stretched, yawned, sprang into his boat and poised his harpoon, pronounced fit for the fight.
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