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Updated: May 28, 2025
The Barnacle family had for some time helped to administer the Circumlocution Office. The Tite Barnacle Branch, indeed, considered themselves in a general way as having vested rights in that direction, and took it ill if any other family had much to say to it. The Barnacles were a very high family, and a very large family.
At the Island of Monaca they took from the bushes with their hands near two hogsheads full of birds in three or four hours. These, it is useless to say, were probably not the "barnacle geese" which the nautical travelers used to find, and picture growing upon bushes and dropping from the eggs, when they were ripe, full-fledged into the water. The beasts were fearless of men.
It was not a barnacle, but a curious oblong shell-fish, open at one end. At sight of this, the wounded forgot their wounds, and leaned over the boat's side, detaching the shell-fish with their knives. They broke them with the handles of their knives, and devoured the fish. They were as thick as a man's finger and about an inch long, and as sweet as a nut.
'But surely this is not the way to do the business, Arthur Clennam could not help saying. This airy young Barnacle was quite entertained by his simplicity in supposing for a moment that it was. This light in hand young Barnacle knew perfectly that it was not.
Lily Pendleton's opinion had weight with Pretty Sweet. He sat down, gloomy and breathless, and tried to ignore the Barnacle. The latter sat on his tail all through the alfresco meal, directly behind Purt. The dude gave him no attention; but the other boys threw pieces of meat and sweet crackers into the air for the Barnacle to catch. Could he catch them?
The boat soon picked them up. The poor bumpkin was restored. All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive. Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that he at all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies.
Liz fed him at the edge of the wood; the girls chased him from the vicinity of the tents whenever he appeared. The Barnacle did not mind much; for he had struck a dog-hunter's paradise. He was a fiend after small game and there had not been a dog on Acorn Island for some years, in all probability. He was running and yapping all day and pretty nearly all night.
He had failed now, through trying to win success through other men's efforts a barnacle clinging to the hull of some craft freighted with fortune. Perhaps, too, he fairly and squarely faced the fact that if he was to be one whit different from the beggar for whom he had been mistaken, he must build his own life solely and wholly on his own efforts.
Mr Barnacle touched the bell, and Doubleday appeared. "Doubleday, go to Hawkesbury's desk and bring me the petty-cash book and box." Hawkesbury turned pale and broke out into a rage. "What is this for, Mr Barnacle? I am not going to stand it! What right have you to suspect me?" "Give Doubleday the key," repeated Mr Barnacle. "No," exclaimed Hawkesbury, in a white heat.
You may find a very respectable quarto account of the family, tracing them in all their varieties; but a page might inform you of all that is essential about the barnacle, curious as its history has been, and you need not ponder on the quarto unless you have some particular curiosity to gratify. The Types of nature, both in her vegetable and animal departments are, after all, few.
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