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At first they are overawing; their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socractic wisdom.

But savages are strange beings; at times you do not know exactly how to take them.

Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference of his very strange.

Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book.

Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.

It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on top.

It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of George Washington's head, as seen in the popular busts of him.

Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one.

He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor.

And besides all this, there was a certain loft bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim.

Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils.

You cannot hide the soul.

Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face -- at least to my taste -- his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable.

With much interest I sat watching him.

He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties being found together, that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.

But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page -- as I fancied -- stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving...

He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way.

CHAPTER X. A Bosom Friend. Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time.

He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction covered face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed, and he was left alone in the place.

"Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should out the lifetime of his God?"