Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

"He say," said I, "that you came near kill-e that man there," pointing to the still shivering greenhorn.

 

[Old Thunder]

"Kill-e," cried Queequeg, twisted his tattooed face into an unearthly expression of disdain, "ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!"

 

[Old Thunder]

"Look you," roared the Captain, "I'll kill-e you, you cannibal, if you try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye."

 

[Old Thunder]

But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to mind his own eye.

 

[Old Thunder]

The prodigious strain upon the mainsail had parted the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to side, completely sweeping the entire afterpart of the deck.

 

[Old Thunder]

The poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it, seemed madness.

 

[Old Thunder]

It flew from right to left, and back again, almost in one ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of snapping into splinters.

 

[Old Thunder]

Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable of being done; those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale.

 

[Old Thunder]

In the midst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his kees, and crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe.

 

[Old Thunder]

The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to his waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap.