Volume I Part 4 (1/2)
In the tragico-comico moods which at times overtook me, I used to look upon the brown Skyeman with huht I, then, ready-roasted Norseman that thou art, shall I survive tothe period I revolve upon the spit
But of such a fate, it needs hardly be said, we had no apprehension
CHAPTER XI Jarl Afflicted With The Lockjaw
If ever again I launch whale-boat froood heed, that htly felloith a rattle-box head Be he never so silly, his very silliness, so long as he be lively at it, shall be its own excuse
Upon occasion, who likes not a lively loon, one of your giggling, garin? Are not such, well-ordered dispensations of Providence? filling up vacuu the tediu up, here and there, in very ood opinion of themselves? What, if at times their speech is insipid as water after wine? What, if to ungenial and irascible souls, their very ”” is an exasperation to behold, their clack an inducement to suicide? Let us not be hard upon theood they may do
But Jarl, dear, dumb Jarl, thou wert none of these Thou didst carry a phiz like an excommunicated deacon's And no matter what happened, it was ever the same Quietly, in thyself, thou didst revolve upon thine own sober axis, like a wheel in a oes round, whether you look at it or no Ay, Jarl! wast thou not forever intent upon lect--thine own especial business? Wast thou not forever at it, too, with no likelihood of ever winding up thya balance sheet?
But at ti reveries in ; a burst of words; huet so of this sort out of Jarl, I tried it all by , halloing, andstared hard; and I myself paused to consider whether I had run crazy or no
But how account for the Skyeravity? Surely, it was based upon no philosophic taciturnity; he was nothing of an idealist; an aerial architect; a constructor of flying buttresses It was inconceivable, that his reveries were Manfred-like and exalted, reminiscent of unutterable deeds, too mysterious even to be indicated by the remotest of hints Suppositions all out of the question
His ruminations were a riddle I asked him anxiously, whether, in any part of the world, Savannah, Surat, or Archangel, he had ever a wife to think of; or children, that he carried so lengthy a phiz Nowhere neither Therefore, as by his own confession he had nothing to think of but hi which, by the way, he ht full to the briinal theory: namely, that in repose, his intellects stepped out, and left his body to itself
CHAPTER XII More About Being In An Open Boat
On the thirdoar, an hour or two previous having relieved Jarl, now fast asleep Somehow, and suddenly, a sense of peril so intense, caravated by the completest solitude
On a shi+p's deck, theof elevation above the water, and the reach of prospect you coree of confidence which disposes you to exult in your fancied security But in an open boat, brought down to the very plane of the sea, this feeling alambols, toss you and your chip upon one of their lordly crests, your sphere of vision is little larger than it would be at the bottom of a well At best, your h, slow-rolling sea; when you descend into the dark,and unifor up and down in a twilight glade, inter through the seering not long in those silent vales, fro our solitary craft,--a goat a the Alps!
How undulated the horizon; like a vast serpent with ten thousand folds coiled all round the globe; yet so nigh, apparently, that it seeht touch it
What loneliness; when the sun rose, and spurred up the heavens, we hailed hiht of a distant horseman
Save ourselves, the sun and the Chamois seemed all that was left of life in the universe We yearned toward its jocund disk, as in strange lands the traveler joyfully greets a face from home, which there had passed unheeded And was not the sun a fellow-voyager? e not both wending ard? But how soon he daily overtook and passed us; hurrying to his journey's end
When a week had gone by, sailing steadily on, by day and by night, and nothing in sight but this self-sahts at last entered our hearts? If unknowingly we should pass the spot where, according to our reckoning, our islands lay, upon what shoreless sea would we launch? At tis bewildered ue and confused; so that ard of the Kingsht but an endless sea
CHAPTER XIII Of The Chondropterygii, And Other Uncouth Hordes Infesting The South Seas
At intervals in our lonely voyage, there were sights which diversified the scene; especially when the constellation Pisces was in the ascendant
It's fa, they say, in Arkansas' boundless prairies; I coy to an open boat, and the ocean e monsters float by Elsewhere, was never seen their like And nowhere are they found in the books of the naturalists
Though America be discovered, the Cathays of the deep are unknown
And whoso crosses the Pacific ht have read lessons to Buffon The sea-serpent is not a fable; and in the sea, that snake is but a garden worm There are hts unrevealed than you or I ever ever dreamt of Moles and bats alone should be skeptics; and the only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead Be Sir Thoar Errors,” heartily hugged all the mysteries in the Pentateuch