Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of
the sleeper, and lighted his tomahawk pipe.
I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing over
the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile,
upon questioning him in his broken fashion, Queequeg
gave me to understand that, in his land, owing to
the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the
king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in
the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for
ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in that
respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy
fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves.
Besides, it was very convenient on an excursion;
much better than those garden-chairs which are convertible
into walking sticks; upon occasion, a chief calling
his attendant, and desiring him to make a settee of
himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp
marshy place.
While narrating these things, every time Queequeg
received the tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet-side
of it over the sleeper’s head.
“What’s that for, Queequeg?”
“Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!
He was going on with some wild reminiscences about
his tomahawk-pipe which, it seemed, had in its two
uses both brained his foes and soothed his soul, when
we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger.
The strong vapor now completely filling the contracted
hole, it began to tell upon him. He breathed
with a sort of muffledness; then seemed troubled in
the nose; then revolved over once or twice; then sat
up and rubbed his eyes.
“Holloa!” he breathed at last, “who
be ye smokers?”
“Shipped men,” answered I, “when
does she sail?”
“Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye?
She sails to-day. The Captain came aboard last
night.”
“What Captain?—Ahab?”
“Who but him indeed?”
I was going to ask him some further questions concerning
Ahab, when we heard a noise on deck.
“Holloa! Starbuck’s astir,”
said the rigger. “He’s a lively chief
mate that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now,
I must turn to.” And so saying he went
on deck, and we followed.
It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came
on board in twos and threes; the riggers bestirred
themselves; the mates were actively engaged; and several
of the shore people were busy in bringing various last
things on board. Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained
invisibly enshrined within his cabin.
CHAPTER 22
Merry Christmas
At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal
of the ship’s riggers, and after the Pequod
had been hauled out from the wharf, and after the
ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat,
with her last gift— a nightcap for Stubb,
the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a spare Bible
for the steward—after all this, the two
Captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin,
and turning to the chief mate, Peleg said:
