51 
the white whale 
queg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain 
the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom — 
so he told me — he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the 
Christians the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they 
were ; and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas ! the 
practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could 
be both miserable and wicked ; infinitely more so than all his father’s 
heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbour; and seeing what the 
sailors did there; and then going on to Uantucket, and seeing how they 
spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for 
lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians ; I’ll die a pagan. 
And thus an old idolater at heart, he yet lived among these Christians, 
wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer 
ways about him, though now some time from home. 
By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going hack, and 
having a coronation ; since he might now consider his father dead and 
gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered 
no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather 
Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne 
of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would 
return, — as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, 
however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four 
oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron 
was in lieu of a sceptre now. 
I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his 
future movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. 
Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed 
him of my intention to sail out of Hantucket, as being the most promis- 
ing port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once 
resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, 
get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in 
short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip 
into the pot-luck of both worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for 
besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was an experienced 
harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great usefulness to one, 
who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, 
though well acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant seamen. 
