people stared; not at Queequeg so much - for they were used to seeing
cannibals like him in their streets, - but at seeing him and me upon such
confidential terms. But we heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by
turns, and Queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon
barbs. I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and
whether all whaling-ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in
substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a
particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well
tried in many a mortal combat, 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 Harbour. 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 cocoa-nuts
into a large stained calabash like a punch-bowl; and this punch-bowl 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 honour, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and
between the High Priest and his majesty the King, Queequeg's father