Chapter 12 - Page 2

human nature."

"So do I, girl; the human nature of a seaman, and the human nature
of one of these fellows of the 55th, not even excepting your
own father. Here have they had a shooting-match -- target-firing
I should call it -- this day, and what a different thing has it
been from a target-firing afloat! There we should have sprung our
broadside, sported with round shot, at an object half a mile off,
at the very nearest; and the potatoes, if there happened to be any
on board, as very likely would not have been the case, would have
been left in the cook's coppers. It may be an honorable calling,
that of a soldier, Mabel; but an experienced hand sees many follies
and weaknesses in one of these forts. As for that bit of a lake,
you know my opinion of it already, and I wish to disparage nothing.
No real seafarer disparages anything; but, d--- me, if I regard
this here Ontario, as they call it, as more than so much water in
a ship's scuttle-butt. Now, look you here, Mabel, if you wish to
understand the difference between the ocean and a lake, I can make
you comprehend it with a single look: this is what one may call
a calm, seeing that there is no wind; though, to own the truth,
I do not think the calms are as calm as them we get outside -- "

"Uncle, there is not a breath of air. I do not think it possible
for the leaves to be more immovably still than those of the entire
forest are at this very moment."

"Leaves! what are leaves, child? there are no leaves at sea. If
you wish to know whether it is a dead calm or not, try a mould
candle, -- your dips flaring too much, --and then you may be certain
whether there is or is not any wind. If you were in a latitude
where the air was so still that you found a difficulty in stirring
it to draw it in in breathing, you might fancy it a calm. People
are often on a short allowance of air in the calm latitudes. Here,
again, look at that water! It is like milk in a pan, with no more
motion now than there is in a full hogshead before the bung is
started. On the ocean the water is never still, let the air be as
quiet as it may."

"The water of the ocean never still, Uncle Cap? not even in a calm?"

"Bless your heart, no, child! The ocean breathes like a living
being, and its bosom is always heaving, as the poetizers call it,
though there be no more air than is to be found in a siphon. No
man ever saw the ocean still like this lake; but it heaves and sets
as if it had lungs."

"And this lake is not absolutely still, for you perceive there is
a little ripple on the shore, and you may even hear the surf plunging
at moments against the rocks."

"All d----d poetry! Lake