Wheelbarrow — Moby-Dick

Monday morning Ishmael and Queequeg leave the Spouter-Inn. Ishmael sells Queequeg's preserved head to a barber for carving money. He pays both their bills with Queequeg's cash. The landlord and guests grin because Peter Coffin had scared Ishmael with wild stories about Queequeg, and now the two act like close friends.

They borrow a wheelbarrow and roll their bags down to the Moss, a small ship heading to Nantucket. People stare, not so much at Queequeg, since strangers like him are common in town, but at seeing a white man walking beside him like a partner. Queequeg carries his own harpoon and tells funny stories: once he put the whole wheelbarrow on his shoulders at Sag Harbor, and once a ship captain washed his hands in a wedding punchbowl on Queequeg's island, thinking it was a bowl for washing fingers.

On board they sail past New Bedford's wharves full of whale ships and barrels. Other passengers laugh at the friendship. When one young man mocks Queequeg behind his back, Queequeg tosses him in the air as a joke. The captain yells that Queequeg almost killed the man. Queequeg answers that he does not bother with small fish; he kills whales.

Then the wind snaps a rope and the ship's heavy boom swings across the deck. It knocks the same mocking passenger overboard. Everyone panics. Queequeg crawls under the boom, ties it with a rope, jumps into the cold water, and pulls the man back alive. The crew cheers and the captain apologizes. Ishmael decides he will stick with Queequeg from then on. Queequeg only asks for fresh water, lights his pipe, and says cannibals must help Christians because it is one shared world.