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Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river.

At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner.

"Now," said Queequeg, "what you tink now? - Didn't our people laugh?"

Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and thinking himself - being Captain of a ship - as having plain precedence over a mere island King, especially in the King's own house - the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl; - taking it I suppose for a...

Grace being said, - for these people have their grace as well as we - though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts - Grace, I say, being said, the High Priest...

Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at the bride's bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post of honour, places himself over against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the King, Queequeg's father.

Now a certain grand merchant-ship once touched at Rokovoko, and its commander - from all accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain - this commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg's sister, a pretty young princess just turned of ten.

The people of his island of Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young coconuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held.

Upon this, he told me another story.

"Why," said I, "Queequeg, you might have known better than that, one would think. Didn't the people laugh?"

Not to seem ignorant about the thing - though in truth he was certainly so, concerning the precise way in which to manage the barrow - Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf.

The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding-house.

It was in Sag Harbor.

Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen.

In short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers' meadows armed with their own scythes - though in no wise obliged to furnish them - even so, Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon.

To this, in substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales.

I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons.

But we heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs.

As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so much - for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets, - but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms.

We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg's canvas sack and hammock, away we went down to the "Moss", the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf.