Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and
South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.

When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a
grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green
sapling; even then, in Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire
to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His
father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the
maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable
warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though
sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his
untutored youth.

A Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg sought a passage
to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of seamen,
spurned his suit; and not all the King his father’s influence could
prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a
distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted
the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of
land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. Hiding
his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he
sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding
by, like a flash he darted out; gained her side; with one backward dash of
his foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing
himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and
swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.

In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a cutlass
over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and Queequeg budged
not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit
Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him he might make
himself at home. But this fine young savage—this sea Prince of
Wales, never saw the Captain’s cabin. They put him down among the sailors,
and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter content to toil in the
shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if
thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored
countrymen. For at bottom—so he told me—he was actuated by a
profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make
his people still happier than they were; and more than that, still better
than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him
that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more
so, than all his father’s heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and
seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and
seeing how they spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave
it up for lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die
a pagan.

And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,
wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer
ways about him, though now some time from home.

By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and having a
coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he being
very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet; and
added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted
him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings
before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,—as soon as he
felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail
about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They had made a
harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now.

I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future
movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon
this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my
intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port for
an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to accompany
me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch,
the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with
both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds. To all
this I joyously assented; for besides the affection I now felt for
Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to
be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the
mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as known to
merchant seamen.

His story being ended with his pipe’s last dying puff, Queequeg embraced
me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the light, we
rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon were
sleeping.