but he now spoke of his native island;and,eager to hear his history,I begged him to go on and tell it. 

 He gladly complied.Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words,yet subsequent disclosures, 

 when I had become more familiar with his broken phraseology,now enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give. 

 CHAPTER 12.Biographical. 

 Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko,an island far away to the West and South.It is not down in any map;true places never are. 

 When a new hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout,followed by the nibbling goats, 

 as if he were a green sapling;even then,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 canoe,he paddled off to a distant strait, 

 which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island.On one side was a coral reef;on the other a low tongue of land,covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. 

 Hiding his canoe,still afloat,among these thickets,with its prow seaward,he sat down in the stern,paddle low in hand;and when the ship was gliding by, 

 like a flash he darted out;gained her side;with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe;climbed up the chains;and throwing himself at full length upon the deck,grappled a ring bolt there, 

 and swore not to let it go,though hacked in pieces. 

 In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard;suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists;Queequeg was the son of a King, 

 and Queequeg budged not.Struck by his desperate dauntlessness,and his wild desire to visit Christendom,the captain at last relented,and told him he might make himself at home.