him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of
his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word,
it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere
sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some
violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.

Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized;
that while a sick, civilized 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
sitting 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 bit, 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 coffin for a sea-chest; and
emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there.
Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of
grotesque 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
beat 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
tantalization of the gods!"

CHAPTER 111. 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 youth was
answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues
of blue.

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently
awful sti