After the sermon, Ishmael and Queequeg walked side by side down the street, a picture unimaginable just three days before.
Queequeg was calm in every step and weighty in every word, more so, even, than Ishmael, who thought himself the civilized one.
From a Prince’s Son to a Sailor
That afternoon, Queequeg told his own story. He was the son of a chief on an island called Kokovoko.
Curious about an unfamiliar world, Christian lands above all, he had one day stowed away on a passing ship. Neither his father nor his island could hold him back.
But what he saw, on the ship and on land, did not match what he had expected. The sailors’ conduct was no better than that of the islanders he had left.
A Man Who Can Fully Return to Neither World
Now he stood in a place that was neither one thing nor the other. He had seen too much to fully return to his own island, and his first expectations of this world had already shattered before he could fully belong to it.
So he lives as a harpooner, a man who has found his place only on the sea, with a foot fully planted on neither shore.
Money Split Exactly in Half
That night, Queequeg emptied his money pouch onto the bed. Then he counted it, coin by coin, and split it exactly in half.
He held half out to Ishmael and pressed his forehead to his. From now on, he declared, they would help each other even unto death.
Sitting Together Before a Strange God
The ritual finished, Queequeg settled before Yojo as he did every night. This time Ishmael sat beside him.
“I was a good Christian… How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood?… to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me—THAT is the will of God.” (Chapter 10)
Ishmael judged it this way. What his own faith taught was neighborly love, and that love did not forbid sitting for a while beside a friend.
Today, Three Nights Ago and Now
Three nights before, in this same room at this same hour, Ishmael had screamed at this very ritual. Today he sits beside it.
What had changed was neither the god nor the ritual. What had changed was only how well he now knew the man beside him.
Together now, the two set out to find a ship to Nantucket.