英语听书《白鲸记》第41期(在线收听) |
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to far distant scenes,I know not, but he now spoke of his native island;and,eager to hear his history,I begged him to go on and tell it.
He gladly complied.Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words,yet subsequent disclosures,
when I had become more familiar with his broken phraseology,now enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.
CHAPTER 12.Biographical.
Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko,an island far away to the West and South.It is not down in any map;true places never are.
When a new hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout,followed by the nibbling goats,
as if he were a green sapling;even then,in Queequeg's ambitious soul,lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two.
His father was a High Chief,a King;his uncle a High Priest;and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors.
There was excellent blood in his veins royal stuff;though sadly vitiated,
I fear,by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.
A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay,and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands.But the ship,having her full complement of seamen,
spurned his suit;and not all the King his father's influence could prevail.But Queequeg vowed a vow.Alone in his canoe,he paddled off to a distant strait,
which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island.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.
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 capsized and sank his canoe;climbed up the chains;and throwing himself at full length upon the deck,grappled a ring bolt there,
and swore not to let it go,though hacked in pieces.
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.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. |
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