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It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore; so we could attend to no business that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The landlord of the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the Try Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all Nantucket, and moreover he had assured us that Cousin Hosea, as he called him, was famous for his chowders. In short, he plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck at the Try Pots. But the directions he had given us about keeping a yellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to the larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a corner three points to the starboard, and that done, then ask the first man we met where the place was: these crooked directions of his very much puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg insisted that the yellow warehouse—our first point of departure—must be left on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to say it was on the starboard. However, by dint of beating about a little in the dark, and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to inquire the way, we at last came to something which there was no mistaking.

First, Pylæmenes, great in battle, bled, Who sheathed in brass the Paphlagonians led. Atrides mark’d him where sublime he stood; Fix’d in his throat the javelin drank his blood. The faithful Mydon, as he turn’d from fight His flying coursers, sunk to endless night; A broken rock by Nestor’s son was thrown: His bended arm received the falling stone; From his numb’d hand the ivory-studded reins, Dropp’d in the dust, are trail’d along the plains: Meanwhile his temples feel a deadly wound; He groans in death, and ponderous sinks to ground: Deep drove his helmet in the sands, and there The head stood fix’d, the quivering legs in air, Till trampled flat beneath the coursers’ feet: The youthful victor mounts his empty seat, And bears the prize in triumph to the fleet.

I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?—to do the will of God—that is worship. And what is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me—that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world. But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.

Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me, but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations. It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows. My wanderings were directed towards the valley of Chamounix. I had visited it frequently during my boyhood. Six years had passed since then: I was a wreck, but nought had changed in those savage and enduring scenes.

Meanwhile (his conquest ravished from his eyes) The raging chief in chase of Venus flies: No goddess she, commission’d to the field, Like Pallas dreadful with her sable shield, Or fierce Bellona thundering at the wall, While flames ascend, and mighty ruins fall; He knew soft combats suit the tender dame, New to the field, and still a foe to fame. Through breaking ranks his furious course he bends, And at the goddess his broad lance extends; Through her bright veil the daring weapon drove, The ambrosial veil which all the Graces wove; Her snowy hand the razing steel profaned, And the transparent skin with crimson stain’d, From the clear vein a stream immortal flow’d, Such stream as issues from a wounded god;[148] Pure emanation! uncorrupted flood! Unlike our gross, diseased, terrestrial blood: (For not the bread of man their life sustains, Nor wine’s inflaming juice supplies their veins:) With tender shrieks the goddess fill’d the place, And dropp’d her offspring from her weak embrace. Him Phœbus took: he casts a cloud around The fainting chief, and wards the mortal wound.