Queequeg and I were walking toward the ship at the far end of the wharf. He carried his harpoon over his shoulder.
Suddenly, Captain Peleg shouted at us from his little cabin on the ship.
“I had no idea your friend was a cannibal!” he called. “And I don’t allow cannibals aboard this ship unless they can show the proper papers.”
“What do you mean by papers, Captain Peleg?” I asked.
I jumped up onto the ship’s side, while Queequeg remained standing on the wharf.
“I mean exactly that,” Peleg said. “He has to prove he’s qualified to sail with us.”
Captain Bildad’s deep voice came from behind him.
“He must prove that he has been converted,” Bildad said.
He leaned out of the cabin and looked directly at Queequeg.
“Son of darkness, are you a member of any Christian church?”
“Of course he is,” I answered. “He belongs to the First Congregational Church.”
It was not unusual for tattooed sailors from distant lands to join Christian churches after spending enough time in Nantucket.
“The First Congregational Church?” Bildad repeated in surprise. “You mean the one that meets in Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman’s meetinghouse?”
He took off his glasses and carefully cleaned them with a large yellow handkerchief.
Then he put them back on, stepped out of the cabin, and leaned over the side of the ship to get a long look at Queequeg.
“How long has he been a member?” he asked me.
“Not very long, I suppose.”
“I knew it,” Peleg said. “And I bet he hasn’t even been properly baptized. If he had, some of that blue devil’s ink would have been washed off his face.”
Bildad looked puzzled.
“Are you telling me this man is actually a regular member of Deacon Deuteronomy’s church? I pass that meetinghouse every Sunday, and I’ve never seen him there.”
“I don’t know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his church,” I said. “All I know is that Queequeg belongs to the First Congregational Church.”
I paused, then added, “In fact, he’s a deacon himself.”
Bildad stared at me.
“Young man, are you making fun of me?”
“No, sir.”
“Then explain yourself. What church are you talking about?”
I realized I had backed myself into a corner.
“Well, sir, I mean the great church that all of us belong to. The ancient church of humanity itself. You, me, Captain Peleg, Queequeg, and everyone else. We may have different beliefs and strange ideas, but when it comes to the basic faith that connects us all, we are members of the same great congregation.”
“Splice hands, you mean!” Peleg suddenly shouted.
He stepped closer, clearly amused.
“Young man, you ought to become a missionary instead of a sailor. That was the finest sermon I’ve heard in a long time.”
He turned toward Bildad.
“Deacon Deuteronomy! Why, even Father Mapple couldn’t have preached it better, and he’s considered pretty good.”
Then Peleg waved his hand.
“Come aboard, come aboard! Forget the papers.”
He looked toward Queequeg.
“Tell that fellow to come aboard. What’s his name again? Quohog?”
Peleg suddenly noticed the harpoon in Queequeg’s hands.
“By the great anchor, look at that harpoon! That’s a fine piece of equipment. And he knows how to handle it, too.”
He leaned forward eagerly.
“Quohog, or whatever your name is, have you ever stood in the bow of a whale boat? Have you ever struck a whale?”
Queequeg said nothing.
Instead, he suddenly jumped onto the ship’s side and then leaped into one of the whale boats hanging beside the vessel.
He planted his left knee firmly, raised his harpoon, and pointed toward the deck.
“Cap’ain, you see that little drop of tar on water dere?”
Peleg and Bildad looked where he was pointing.
“You see him? Suppose him one whale eye!”
Queequeg took careful aim.
Then he threw the harpoon.
The iron flew straight across the deck, passed just over old Bildad’s wide-brimmed hat, and struck the tiny spot of tar perfectly.
Everyone froze.
Queequeg calmly pulled the line back.
“Now suppose him whale eye,” he said. “Whale dead.”
Peleg stared at him for a moment.
Then he turned quickly toward Bildad.
“Quick, Bildad! Get the ship’s papers!”
Bildad looked at him in confusion.
“We need that fellow in one of our boats. I mean Quohog—or whatever his name is.”
Peleg turned back to Queequeg.
“We’ll give you a one-ninetieth share of the profits. That’s more than any harpooner has ever received out of Nantucket.”
So we went down into the cabin, and to my great relief, Queequeg was soon accepted as a member of the same crew I was joining.
Once everything was prepared for the final signing, Peleg turned to me.
“I suppose Quohog doesn’t know how to write, does he?”
Then he shouted toward Queequeg.
“Quohog! Can you sign your name, or do you just make your mark?”
Queequeg had clearly been through this kind of ceremony before.
He did not look embarrassed at all.
He simply took the pen Peleg handed him and copied the strange round symbol tattooed on his arm onto the document.
So, thanks to Captain Peleg’s stubborn habit of getting his name wrong, the ship’s papers ended up reading something like:
Quohog — his X mark.
While this was happening, Captain Bildad continued to stare seriously at Queequeg.
At last, he stood up.
He reached deep into the huge pockets of his long gray coat and pulled out a bundle of religious pamphlets.
After searching through them, he selected one called The Coming Judgment, or No Time to Waste.
He placed it in Queequeg’s hands.
Then Bildad held Queequeg’s hands together with both of his own and looked earnestly into his eyes.
“Son of darkness, I have a duty toward you,” he said.
“I am part owner of this ship, and I care about the souls of every man aboard her. If you are still holding on to your pagan beliefs, as I sadly suspect, I beg you not to remain a servant of the devil forever.”
“Turn away from your false idols. Give up your strange gods. Prepare yourself for the judgment that is coming.”
“Watch yourself, man! Stay away from the fires of hell!”
Bildad spoke in a strange mixture of religious language, sailor’s expressions, and ordinary household phrases.
Peleg finally couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Enough, Bildad! Enough!”
He waved him away.
“You’re going to ruin our harpooner with all this preaching.”
“Pious harpooners never make good sailors. Religion takes the shark out of them.”
“A harpooner needs to be a little wild. If he isn’t sharkish, he isn’t worth much.”
“There was a young fellow named Nat Swaine,” Peleg continued. “He used to be one of the bravest boat leaders in Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Then he joined the church.”
“After that, he was never the same.”
“He became so worried about saving his soul that he started avoiding whales. He was afraid that if the boat was smashed and he died, he might end up in Davy Jones’s locker.”
Bildad looked deeply offended.
“Peleg! Peleg! You have faced death many times yourself. Surely you know what it means to fear death.”
“How can you speak about it so carelessly?”
“You’re denying what is inside your own heart.”
“Tell me this. When the Pequod lost all three of her masts during that terrible typhoon off Japan, when you were serving as mate under Captain Ahab, did you not think about death and judgment then?”
Peleg laughed and began pacing across the cabin with his hands buried deep in his pockets.
“Listen to him! Everyone listen!”
“When we thought the ship might sink at any moment, did I sit there thinking about death and judgment?”
“No!”
“There was no time for that.”
“Life was what Captain Ahab and I were thinking about.”
“We were thinking about how to keep everyone alive, how to build temporary masts, and how to reach the nearest safe port.”
“That was what mattered.”
Bildad had no answer.
He simply buttoned his coat and walked out onto the deck.
We followed him.
He stood quietly for a while, watching several sailmakers repairing a topsail in the middle of the deck.
Every now and then, he bent down and picked up a scrap of cloth or a piece of tarred twine that might otherwise have been thrown away.
Even after all his talk about God, sin, and judgment, old Bildad could not bear to see anything useful go to waste.