Chapter 9

The Watery World Is All Before Them

At sea in an open boat, and a thousand miles from land!

Shortly after the break of day, in the gray transparent light, a
speck to windward broke the even line of the horizon. It was the ship
wending her way north-eastward.

Had I not known the final indifference of sailors to such disasters
as that which the Arcturion's crew must have imputed to the night
past (did not the skipper suspect the truth) I would have regarded
that little speck with many compunctions of conscience. Nor, as it
was, did I feel in any very serene humor. For the consciousness of
being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being
so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a
defunct carcass. Even Jarl's glance seemed so queer, that I begged
him to look another way.

Secure now from all efforts of the captain to recover those whom he
most probably supposed lost; and equally cut off from all hope of
returning to the ship even had we felt so inclined; the resolution
that had thus far nerved me, began to succumb in a measure to the
awful loneliness of the scene. Ere this, I had regarded the ocean as
a slave, the steed that bore me whither I listed, and whose vicious
propensities, mighty though they were, often proved harmless, when
opposed to the genius of man. But now, how changed! In our frail
boat, I would fain have built an altar to Neptune.

What a mere toy we were to the billows, that jeeringly shouldered
us from crest to crest, as from hand to hand lost souls may be tossed
along by the chain of shades which enfilade the route to Tartarus.

But drown or swim, here's overboard with care! Cheer up, Jarl! Ha!
Ha! how merrily, yet terribly, we sail! Up, up--slowly up--toiling up
the long, calm wave; then balanced on its summit a while, like a
plank on a rail; and down, we plunge headlong into the seething
abyss, till arrested, we glide upward again. And thus did we go. Now
buried in watery hollows--our sail idly flapping; then lifted aloft--
canvas bellying; and beholding the furthest horizon.

Had not our familiarity with the business of whaling divested our
craft's wild motions of its first novel horrors, we had been but a
rueful pair. But day-long pulls after whales, the ship left miles
astern; and entire dark nights passed moored to the monsters, killed
too late to be towed to the ship far to leeward:--all this, and much
more, accustoms one to strange things. Death, to be sure, has a mouth
as black as a wolf's, and to be thrust into his jaws is a serious
thing. But true it most certainly is--and I speak from no hearsay--
that to sailors, as a class, the grisly king seems not half so
hideous as he appears to those who