Under the pipe's last blue breath Queequeg tells Ishmael he is a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South that is not down in any map, because true places never are. Even as a new-hatched savage running wild in a grass clout, followed by nibbling goats as if he were a green sapling, an ambitious soul lurked in him to see more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two: his father a High Chief and King, his uncle a High Priest, royal stuff in his veins though Ishmael fears a cannibal propensity once nourished in untutored youth.
When a Sag Harbor ship spurned his passage though not all the King his father's influence could prevail, Queequeg vowed a vow: alone in his canoe he hid among mangrove thickets in a strait the ship must pass, and like a flash darted out, sank the canoe with one backward dash of his foot, climbed the chains, and grappled a ring-bolt swearing not to let it go though hacked in pieces. Queequeg was the son of a King, and Queequeg budged not while the cutlass hung over his naked wrists; the captain relented, yet this sea Prince of Wales never saw the Captain's cabin but was made a whaleman among sailors, content like Czar Peter to toil at seeming ignominy if he might learn Christian arts to make his people happier and better.
Alas, whalemen taught another lesson: Christians could be miserable and wicked, infinitely more so than all his father's heathens; Sag Harbor and Nantucket, watching how wages were spent, convinced poor Queequeg the world was wicked in all meridians and he would die a pagan. An old idolator at heart, he yet wore Christian clothes and gibberish, fearful Christianity had unfitted him for thirty pagan thrones until he felt himself baptized again; for now the barbed iron stood in lieu of a sceptre while he sowed wild oats in four oceans.
When Ishmael shared his design to sail from Nantucket, Queequeg resolved at once to share his every hap, same watch, boat, and mess, both hands boldly dipping into the Potluck of both worlds; Ishmael joyously assented for affection and for an experienced harpooneer who could teach mysteries merchant seamen never knew. His story ended with the pipe's last dying puff, embrace, forehead pressed, light blown out, sleep. What bargain have they sealed when a disillusioned prince and a green whaleman roll toward Monday's wheelbarrow and the Moss packet wharf?
