24 
MOBY DICK; OR 
troubled nightmare of a doze ; and slowly waking from it — half steeped 
in dreams — I opened my eyes, and the before sunlit room was now 
wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through 
all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; 
but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over 
the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phan- 
tom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my bedside. 
For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most 
awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand ; yet ever thinking that 
if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be broken. 
I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me; but 
waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for 
days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding 
attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often 
puzzle myself with it. 
Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the 
supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to 
those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg’ s pagan 
arm thrown round me. But at length all the past night’s events 
soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive 
to the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm — 
unlock his clasp — yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, 
as though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to 
rouse him — “Queequeg!” — but his only answer was a snore. I then 
rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and sud- 
denly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there 
lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet- 
faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I ; abed here in a strange 
house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! “Quee- 
queg! — in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!” At length, by 
dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon 
the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that sort of style, 
I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his 
arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the 
water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rub- 
bing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came to be 
there, though a dim consciousness of knowing something about mo 
