I got Queewegs pipe from Professor Slade PeckarStine, a student of the seas and its mysteries, who told me that he himself had received it from an old auntie who was second niece once removed from Herman Melville. The proff handed it down to me when he got too old for the responsibility, telling me (I was younger back then ) to preserve and protect it as the invaluable artifact it is… since Mellville himself had gotten the pipe from its original owner ....or, to be exact, from that man’s coffin. And you probably know that QueeQueg was t’he brown sailor, of uncertain but possibly canibal extraction and was bunk mates with Melville who ( begins the book saying ‘Call me Ishmael’ but we aren’t dumb, and we know it’s Mellvile we are dealing with.
But we are more interested in Queequeg anyway: Queequeg with the fantasticly tattooed hide, who had nothing to hide and not much to show or stow but his bill hook, some coins, his pipe, and rope which he kept in the coffin that he had enough foresight to eommssion the ship’s carpenter to make.
But it’s Queequegs PIPE in particular that we are concerned with here,
If Queequeg had been sleeping in the coffin with his pipe and stash instead of aloft when the great whale brought them to grief, he might have lived to tell the tale, but when the ship went down as ‘Ishmael” tells us, he - Melville - was thrown clear and treading water when that coffin bobbed to the surface. And ( as Mellville told his nephew, who told his mother, who told her grand neice, who told to professor, who handed it down to me) there in the coffin was Queequeg’s pipe and stash, his bill hook and some coins which , because of the weight, Herman dumped, keeping the hefty bill hook in case of sharks,
You can see from the photos here the face that Queequeg carved on the pipe. h Mellville thought it was the face of Queequeg’s idol or god, but some experts say it only repressents Queequeg himself, or some other Sea Dog. Whatever it is , I myself am too old for the responsibility to preserve and protect such a thing now, and so I’m handing it down. I’m keeping the bill hook though, in case of land sharks.
