"'There's no hurry, Jim," he answered; 'even if we be becalmed a bit, it's cheaper than burning tons o' coal."
"Well, gentlemen, becalmed we was just after tea-time.
"I went on deck arter this, and such a night I'd never seen afore. Never a puff o' wind, sails hangin' idle, and the waves, as much as we could see of them, just like glycerine. I expected to see dead fish floating about on their sides.
"The bo's'n was walkin' with me in the ship's waist; but none of us had very cheery yarns to spin, we just stuck to our pipes and spoke but little.
"I could feel the bo's'n's arm tremble a little, though, as more than once a long quavering cry came over the surface of that hazy, oily ocean, dyin' away in a kind o' wail, like some poor creature in faintin' agony.
"Yes, I believe 'twere on'y a bird, sir; and there do be a shark that cries thus on windless nights near to the echoless ocean—the Sea of Weeds, or Sargasso. And 'twere there we were at this time. Every now and then we could observe long dark strips of the slimy stuff layin' along the rippleless waves' sides, dark and fearful, and looking for all the world like dead serpents.
"I'se a kind o' partial to pottery (poetry), cap'n, and lines from Coleridge's Ancient Mariner would keep risin' up in my mind, and didn't seem out o' place either on a night like that. 'Cause you see that, here and there, there was phosphorescence in the sea, and a shark had once or twice appeared on the surface, his sly eyes flashing, his fins dropping fire, and we could see him as he dived below getting smaller and smaller, till like a little wriggling worm of flame. Even little strips of weed that floated here and there looked like water-serpents.
"'The moving moon went up the sky,
And nowhere did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside.
. . . . . . . .
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burned alway,
A still and awful red.
"'Beyond the shadow of the ship
I watched the water snakes;
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared—the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.'
"But, cap'n, when ye looked horizon-way—and the horizon weren't far off,—at one moment only the moon haze was there, next moment the summer lightning played along fitful but incessant. Then you could see great banks of ugly rock-and-castle clouds in front, a sight that made us think another baby tornado was a-brewin'.