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But by and by, he said, he would return, - as soon as he felt himself baptised again.

He answered no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him.

By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and having a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts.

Hence the queer ways about him, though now some time from home.

And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians, wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish.

Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.

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.

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.

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 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. *Peter the Great (1672 - 1725), Russian emperor; when young he traveled and worked abroad for...

They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him.

But this fine young savage - this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the captain's cabin.

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.

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.

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 capsised and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and...

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.

Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island.

But Queequeg vowed a vow.

No kidding.