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- that we felt the ship strike every time her keel crossed that imaginary
locality.
At length, dead before the equatorial breeze, we threaded our way
straight along the very Line itself. Westward sailing; peering right,
and peering left, but seeing naught.
It was during this weary time, that I experienced the first symptoms of
that bitter impatience of our monotonous craft, which ultimately led to
the adventures herein recounted.
But hold you! Not a word against that rare old ship, nor its crew. The
sailors were good fellows all, the half, score of pagans we had shipped
at the islands included. Nevertheless, they were not precisely to my
mind. There was no soul a magnet to mine; none with whom to mingle
sympathies; save in deploring the calms with which we were now and then
overtaken; or in hailing the breeze when it came. Under other and
livelier auspices the tarry knaves might have developed qualities more
attractive. Had we sprung a leak, been “stove” by a whale, or been
blessed with some despot of a captain against whom to stir up some
spirited revolt, these shipmates of mine might have proved limber lads,
and men of mettle. But as it was, there was naught to strike fire from
their steel.
There were other things, also, tending to make my lot on ship-board
very hard to be borne. True, the skipper himself was a trump; stood
upon no quarter-deck dignity; and had a tongue for a sailor. Let me do
him justice, furthermore: he took a sort of fancy for me in particular;
was sociable, nay, loquacious, when I happened to stand at the helm.
But what of that? Could he talk sentiment or philosophy? Not a bit. His
library was eight inches by four: Bowditch, and Hamilton Moore.
And what to me, thus pining for some one who could page me a quotation
from Burton on Blue Devils; what to me, indeed, were flat repetitions
of long-drawn yarns, and the everlasting stanzas of Black-eyed Susan
sung by our full forecastle choir? Staler than stale ale.
Ay, ay, Arcturion! I say it in no malice, but thou wast exceedingly
dull. Not only at sailing: hard though it was, that I could have borne;
but in every other respect. The days went slowly round and round,
endless and uneventful as cycles in space. Time, and time- pieces; How
many centuries did my hammock tell, as pendulum-like it swung to the
ship’s dull roll, and ticked the hours and ages. Sacred forever be the
Arcturion’s fore-hatch—alas! sea-moss is over it now—and rusty forever
the bolts that held together that old sea hearth-stone, about which we
so often lounged. Nevertheless, ye lost and leaden hours, I will rail
at ye while life lasts.
Well: weeks, chronologically speaking, went by. Bill Marvel’s stories
were told over and over again, till the beginning and end dovetailed
into each other, and were united for aye. Ned Ballad’s songs were sung
till the echoes lurked in the very tops, and nested in the bunts of the
sails. My poor patience was clean gone.
But, at last after some time sailing due westward we quitted the Line
in high disgust; having seen there, no sign of a whale.
But whither now? To the broiling coast of Papua? That region of
sun-strokes, typhoons, and bitter pulls after whales unattainable. Far
worse. We were going, it seemed, to illustrate the Whistonian theory
concerning the damned and the comets;—hurried from equinoctial heats to
arctic frosts. To be short, with the true fickleness of his tribe, our
skipper had abandoned all thought of the Cachalot. In desperation, he
was bent upon bobbing for the Right whale on the Nor’-West Coast and in
the Bay of Kamschatska.
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