Knight of Cups

Meaning: A love prospect, and even a proposal.

Depiction: Just as described in the book, Queequeg presses his forehead to Ishmael's and embraces him. They stand behind a table with one cup on it.

Text: Chapter 10- A Bosom Friend
He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be.

Crude 5-minute sketch that I am sure I will regret sharing; it gives the general idea.

And here's Matt Kish's version of this scene, from Moby Dick in Pictures (2011). A little different than the way I imagined it, as Queequeg and Ishmael are at arm's length. 

Comments: I have a lot to say about this one.  Some critics have expressed incredulity that Melville openly included a homoerotic friendship  in Moby Dick at a time when homosexual identity was not recognized, and homosexual behavior was subject to criminal penalties.  Yet he found a way to do it.  He wrote long passages demonstrating how Queequeg is completely alien in all ways to Ishmael: from the other side of the world, from a different culture and race, of an unfamiliar pagan religion, of what seem to him outlandish and peculiar habits (freezing in prayer for long periods, shaving with his harpoon, hiding under the bed to put his shoes on, etc). Queequeg's easy physical intimacy with Ishmael is passed off to the mainstream Victorian reader as just part and parcel of his "odd" foreign ways. Indeed, Ishmael admits that he would be wary of such advances from a fellow white Christian American, say, Bulkington:

In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply. (Ch. 10)

I credit this perspective to my reading of Emma Rantatolo's masters thesis:  "A Cosy, loving pair"?- The Elusion of Definitions of Queequeg and Ishmael's Relationship in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (2018).