and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales. In short, like many
inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmer's 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.

Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny
story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen.
It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent
him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding house.
Not to seem ignorant about the thing--though in truth he was
entirely 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.
"Why," said I, "Queequeg, you might have known better than that,
one would think. Didn't the people laugh?"

Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island
of Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant
water of young cocoanuts 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. 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. Well; when all
the wedding guests were assembled at the bride's bamboo cottage,
this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post of honor,
placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between
the High Priest and his majesty the King, Queequeg's father.
Grace being said,--for those people have their grace as well as we--