THE WHITE WHALE 
443 
errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who’s now been missing long: I 
think he’s in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; 
for he must be very sad ; for look ! he’s left his tambourine behind ; — 
I found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! How, Queequeg,, die; and I’ll beat 
ye your dying march.” 
“I have heard,” murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, “that 
in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; 
and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their 
wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken 
in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor 
Pip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers 
of all our heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there? — 
Hark! he speaks again: but more wildly now.” 
“Form two and two! Let’s make a General of him! Ho, where’s 
his harpoon ? Lay it across here — Pig-a-dig, dig, dig ! huzza ! Oh, 
for a game-cock now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies 
game! — mind ye that; Queequeg dies game! — take ye good heed of 
that ; Queequeg dies game ! I say ; game, game, game ! but base little 
Pip, he died a coward; died all a-shiver;- — out upon Pip! Hark ye: 
if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles he’s a runaway ; a coward, a coward, 
a coward ! Tell them he jumped from a whale boat ! I’d never beat 
my tambourine over base Pip, and hail him General, if he were once 
more dying here. Ho, no ! shame upon all cowards — shame upon 
them! Let ’em go drown like Pip, that jumped from a whale boat. 
Shame! shame!” 
During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. 
Pip was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock. ’ 
But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death ; 
now that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; 
soon there seemed no need of the carpenter’s box : and thereupon, when 
some expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that 
th« cause of his sudden convalescence was this : — at a critical moment, 
he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone; 
and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet, 
he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter 
of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, Certainly. In 
