50 
MOBY DICK; OR 
CHAPTER XII 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West 
and South. It is not down in any map ; true places never are. 
When a new-hatched savage, running wild about his native woodlands 
in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green 
sapling; even then, in Queequeg’ s ambitious soul, lurked a strong de- 
sire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler 
or two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High 
Priest ; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives 
of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins — 
royal stuff ; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity 
he nourished in his untutored youth. 
A Sag Harbour ship visited his father’s hay, and Queequeg sought 
a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement 
of seamen, spurned his suit ; and not all the King his father’s influence 
could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he 
paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through 
when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the 
other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew 
out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, 
with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stem, paddle low in hand; 
and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained 
her side; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his 
canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length 
upon the deck, grappled a ring-holt there, and swore not to let it go, 
though hacked in pieces. 
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended 
a cutlass over his naked wrists ; Queequeg was the son of a King, and 
Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his 
wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told 
him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage — 
this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the captain’s cabin. They put 
him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like 
the Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Quee- 
