QUEEQUEG IN HIS COFFING
At a certain point in our voyage, a leak was discovered in the hold of the Pequod. This meant that all the barrels and other containers had to be brought up on the deck. It was a dirty job. The men had to climb deep into the dark wet hold and work for hours. Queequeg was one of those who helped bring the barrels up on the deck. While working and sweating, Queequeg caught a terrible fever. He continued to work, but in the end he had to lie down on his hammock, exhausted by the fever.
Day after day, Queequeg became weaker and weaker, thinner and thinner, until it was clear that he was going to die. Queequeg had a last request. He wanted to be put into what he thought was a little canoe when he died. This ‘little canoe’ was really a regular coffin, but to Queequeg it looked like the canoe in which his tribe put their dead. Queequeg and his tribe believed that the dead sailed away on this canoe as far as the horizon where the sea meets the sky. Then the little canoe would sail to the stars which Queequeg thought were groups of islands.
