25 
THE WHITE WHALE 
seemed slowly dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing 
him, having no serious misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly ob- 
serving so curious a creature. When, at last, his mind seemed made 
up touching the character of his bedfellow, and he became, as it were, 
reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon the floor, and by certain 
signs and sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me he would 
dress flrst and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole 
apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, 
this is a very civilised overture ; but, the truth is, these savages have 
an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is marvellous how 
essentially polite they are. I pay this particular compliment to Quee- 
queg, because he treated me with so much civility and consideration, 
while I was guilty of great rudeness; staring at him from the bed, 
and watching all his toilet motions: for the time my curiosity getting 
the better of my breeding. Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you 
don’t see every day, he and his ways were well worth unusual re- 
garding. 
He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very 
tall one, by the bye, and then — still minus his trousers, — he hunted 
up his boots. What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, 
but his next movement was to crush himself — boots in hand, and hat 
on — under the bed ; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, 
I inferred he was hard at work booting himself ; though by no law of 
propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required to be private when 
putting on his boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in 
the transition state — neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just 
enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible 
manner. His education was not yet completed. He was an under- 
graduate. If he had not been a small degree civilised, he very prob- 
ably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then, if 
he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of getting 
under the bed to put them on. At last, he emerged with his hat very 
much dented and crushed down over his eyes and began creaking and 
limping about the room, as if, not being much accustomed to boots, 
his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones — probably not made to order 
either — rather pinched and tormented him at the first go off of a 
bitter cold morning. 
