Nightgown — Moby-Dick

Their hearts' honeymoon is still in the nightgown hour: Ishmael and Queequeg lie chatting and napping in the Spouter-Inn bed while Queequeg affectionately throws his brown tattooed legs over Ishmael's and draws them back, so sociable and free and easy that talk finally drives off the last of sleep though daybreak remains far down the future. Wakefulness turns recumbent comfort wearisome; little by little they sit up with clothes tucked round them, four knees drawn close, two noses bending over them as if their kneepans were warming-pans. The room has no fire and the outer air is chilly, which suits Ishmael's mind exactly: truly to enjoy bodily warmth some small part of you must stay cold, for no quality in this world is what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself; you lie like one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal, blanket your only wall against the luxurious discomfort of perfect heat.

Ishmael keeps his eyes shut between sheets whether asleep or awake, concentrating snugness and feeling identity aright only in self-created darkness; opening them to the coarse unilluminated gloom of twelve o'clock at night brings disagreeable revulsion. Queequeg hints they should strike a light and have quiet puffs from his Tomahawk; be it said that though Ishmael felt strong repugnance to bed smoking the night before, see how elastic stiff prejudices grow when love comes to bend them. He likes nothing better now than Queequeg smoking beside him, full of serene household joy, alive only to condensed confidential comfortableness while they pass the pipe beneath a blue hanging tester of smoke lit by the new lamp.

Whether that undulating tester rolls the savage toward distant scenes Ishmael cannot tell, but Queequeg speaks of his native island and Ishmael, eager at last, begs him to go on and tell it; Queequeg gladly complies, and the skeleton of a life story waits to unfold once broken phraseology becomes familiar. What kind of prince stows away from paradise to learn from Christians, and will Ishmael hear the tale fair despite the words he but ill comprehends tonight?