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“ Don’t be afraid , ” he said to me . “ Queequeg here won’t hurt a hair on your head . ” Then he turned to the harpooneer . “ Queequeg , this man sleeps with you tonight . You understand ? ” “ Yes , I understand , ” said Queequeg . He put out his pipe and moved over politely to one side of the bed . “ You get in , ” he said to me kindly . I looked at him for a moment , and I felt a little ashamed . “ What am I so afraid of ? ” I asked myself . “ He is a human being just as I am . He has as much reason to fear me as I have to fear him . ” So I said goodnight and got back into bed . I never slept better in my life . When I woke up in the morning , Queequeg’s arm was lying across me in a very friendly way . I could hardly tell his tattooed arm from the patterned blanket . At last I woke him , and he sat up and looked at me . Then he got up and began to dress . He put on his tall hat first , and then he crawled under the bed to pull on his boots . After that he washed his chest , arms and hands , took his harpoon and shaved his cheeks with its sharp iron point . I watched him with great interest . At breakfast all the whalers sat round one long table . I expected exciting stories about the sea , but these brave men only stared shyly at their plates . Queequeg sat at the head of the table , as cool as ice . He did not use a fork . Instead , he reached across the table with his harpoon and took the beefsteaks from the plate . III . Friends That Sunday morning I walked through the town , and then I went into the Whaleman’s Chapel , the small church of the sailors . Outside there was snow and a cold wind . Inside , a few quiet people sat apart from each other . To my surprise , Queequeg was there too , near the door . On the walls there were white stone tablets with names on them . Each one remembered a sailor who went whaling and never came home . I read the tablets with a heavy heart , because I was going to sail on a whaling ship myself . The preacher was Father Mapple . He was an old man , but still very strong . When he was young , he was a harpooneer himself . His pulpit , the high place where he stood to speak , was built like the front of a ship . To reach it , he climbed a rope ladder , like a sailor . At the top he turned round and pulled the whole ladder up after him . Now nobody could reach him there . He told us the old story of Jonah . God gave Jonah a hard task , but Jonah did not want to do it . He tried to run away from God on a ship . Then a great storm came , and the sailors threw Jonah into the sea . A huge whale swallowed him . In the dark inside the whale , Jonah prayed , and at last he learned to obey . “ Shipmates , ” said Father Mapple , “ the truth is often hard . But we must speak it and follow it , even when the whole world is against us . ” His deep voice filled the little chapel like a wind .
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