Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He
gladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of
his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar
with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story
such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.




CHAPTER XII. BIOGRAPHICAL


Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, 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