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IV . Nantucket On Monday morning we borrowed a wheelbarrow and pushed our bags down to the harbour . People in the street stared at us , but we did not care . We took the little ship to Nantucket . Soon we were out on the open water , and the cold wind filled the sails . Queequeg and I stood on the deck , the wide wooden floor of the ship where the sailors work . He smiled at the waves . A few of the passengers were silly young men from the country . One of them began to copy Queequeg behind his back and laugh at him . Queequeg saw it . He put down his pipe , took the young man in his strong arms , and threw him high into the air . The young man turned over and landed on his feet , white with fear . Then Queequeg calmly picked up his pipe again . The captain came running . “ Hey ! ” he shouted at Queequeg . “ Don’t do that again , or I’ll throw you into the sea myself ! ” At that moment a strong wind caught the big sail . The boom , the heavy wooden pole at the bottom of the sail , broke loose . It began to swing wildly from one side of the ship to the other . It hit the young man who had laughed at Queequeg , and he fell over the side into the icy sea . Everybody was afraid to go near the swinging boom . Only Queequeg moved . He ran under it , caught a rope and tied the boom firmly in its place . Then he took off his coat and dived into the water . For a few minutes we saw his strong arms among the grey waves . Then he disappeared . We waited , and nobody said a word . At last he came up again . He was holding the young man , who was now as quiet as a sleeping child . The sailors pulled them both out of the water . Everybody on the ship looked at Queequeg in a new way . The captain said that he was sorry . But Queequeg only asked for some fresh water to wash off the salt , and then he sat down and lit his pipe . “ Why did you do it ? ” I asked him later . “ He laughed at you . ” Queequeg thought for a moment . “ The world is the same everywhere , ” he said . “ People must help each other . ” Nantucket was a small , sandy island with almost no trees . But the men of Nantucket were famous whalers . They went out in their ships to the far ends of the earth , and they felt at home on the sea . We stayed at an inn called the Try Pots . The landlady , Mrs Hussey , gave us big bowls of chowder , a hot , thick soup of fish and potatoes . We had chowder for breakfast and dinner too . That night in bed Queequeg gave me some important news . He had asked his little god , Yojo , about our voyage . “ Yojo says that you must choose the ship , ” he told me . “ You must go alone . Yojo will help you . You will choose the right ship without knowing it . ” I did not like this plan much , because Queequeg knew more about ships than I did . But he trusted Yojo completely . So the next morning I walked down to the harbour alone .
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