[ Melville / Moby-Dick ]
In Chapter 4 of Melville's classic novel, Ishmael, the narrator, describes how he had been forced to share a bed with the mysterious harpooner Queequeg, who during the night inadvertently draped his arm over Ishmael. In the morning Ishmael finds himself unable to get out of bed because of the weight and strength of Queequeg's arm, and he struggles to wake his strange bedfellow:
At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him.