80 
MOBY DICK; OR 
loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my 
friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no 
cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced their 
papers. 
“What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg?” said I, now jumping 
on the bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf. 
“I mean,” he replied, “he must show his papers.” 
“Yes,” said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head 
from behind Peleg’ s, out of the wigwam. “He must show that he’s 
converted. Son of darkness,” he added, turning to Queequeg, “art 
thou at present in communion with any Christian church?” 
“Why,” said I, “he’s a member of the first Congregational Church” ; 
and I entered upon a long rigmarole story, touching the conversion 
of Queequeg, and concluded by saying that in the grand belief we all 
joined hands. 
“Splice, thou mean’st splice hands,” cried Peleg, drawing nearer. 
“Young man, you’d better ship for a missionary, instead of a foremast 
hand; I never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy — why, 
Father Mapple himself couldn’t beat it, and he’s reckoned something. 
Come aboard, come aboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell 
Quohog there — what’s that you call him? tell Quohog to step along. 
By the great anchor, what a harpoon he’s got there ! looks like good stuff 
that ; and he handles it about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your 
name is, did you ever stand in the head of a whale boat ? did you ever 
strike a fish ?” 
Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped 
upon the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale 
boats hanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and posing 
his harpoon, cried out in some such way as this — 
“Cap’ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him ? 
well, spose him one whale eye, well, den !” and taking sharp aim at it, 
he darted the iron right over old Bildad’s broad-brim, clean across the 
ship’s decks and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight. 
“How,” said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, “spos-ee him 
whale-e eye; why, dat whale dead.” 
“Quick, Bildad,” said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close 
