444 MOBY. DICK; OR 
a word, it was Queequeg’ s conceit that if a man made up his mind 
to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing hut a whale, or a 
gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort. 
How, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civi- 
lised ; that while a sick, civilised man may be six months convalescing, 
generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half well again in a day. 
So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength ; and at length after sit- 
ting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a vigorous 
appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms and legs, 
gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little hit, and then springing 
into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced 
himself fit for a fight. 
With a wild whimsiness, he now used his cotfin for a sea-chest ; and 
emptying into it his canvas hag of clothes, set them in order there. 
Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of gro- 
tesque figures and drawings ; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, 
in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. 
And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer 
of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his 
body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical 
treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own 
proper person was a riddle to unfold ; a wondrous work in one volume ; 
but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live 
heart heat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined 
in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they 
were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it 
must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, 
when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg — 
“Oh, devilish tantalisation of the gods !” 
CHAPTER CX 
THE PACIFIC 
When gliding by the Bashee Isles we emerged at last upon the great 
South Sea ; were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear 
Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my 
