Four of Wands

 

Meaning: Freedom, creativity, and domestic happiness.

Depiction: On a calm day, Queequeg and Ishmael weave a rope sword mat together on the quarterdeck, Ishmael sitting and Queequeg standing beside him. Four harpoons lean against the bulwark behind them.

Text: Chapter 47- The Mat-Maker
It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters. Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self.

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. 

Comments:  Although Ishmael indulges in the grand fantasy that he and Queequeg are weaving fate at the Loom of Time, really they haven't been captains of their own destiny since they boarded the Pequod.  This small moment together is probably the most domestic they get the entire time they're at sea.

The American Renaissance Tarot version of this card is Chapter 94 - A Squeeze of the Hand! An interesting choice and the way it is portrayed is true to the spirit of the card meaning.