we borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own poor carpet-bag, and queequeg’s canvas sack and hammock, away we went down to "the moss," the little nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf. as we were going along the people stared; not at queequeg so much—for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets,—but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. but we heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. i asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. to this, in substance, he replied, that though what i hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales. in short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers’ meadows armed with their own scythes—though in no wise obliged to furnish them—even so, queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon.