ished 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,