Abridging Moby Dick

Abridged Text, followed by Abridger Notes, followed by multimedia, followed by Original Text with deletions .   Chapter 14 Nantucket   Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day’s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island ...

  Abridged Text, followed by Abridger Notes, followed by multimedia, followed by Original Text with deletions .   Chapter 13 Wheelbarrow   Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade’s bill; using, however, my comrade’s money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between me and Queequeg—especially as Peter Coffin’s cock and bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom I now companied with.   We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg’s canvas sack and hammock, away we went down to “the Moss,” the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so much—for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets,—but at seei...

  Abridged Text, followed by Abridger Notes, followed by multimedia, followed by Original Text with deletions .   Chapter 12 Biographical Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.   In Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.   A Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father’s influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his ...

  Abridged Text, followed by Abridger Notes, followed by multimedia, followed by Original Text with deletions .   Chapter 11 Nightgown   We had lain in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when, at last, we became very wakeful; and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us. We felt very snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. Truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If, like Queequeg and me, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this re...

Abridged Text, followed by Abridger Notes, followed by multimedia, followed by Original Text with deletions .   Chapter 10 A Bosom Friend   Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there quite alone. He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way.   But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page—as I fancied—stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could...