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.
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