Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
Wednesday, May 27. We have been becalmed all day between the northeast and northwest trades. The ocean has slumbered around us with scarce a ripple. A large shark was seen hanging around our ship through the morning. A strong hook, attached to a rope and baited with a pound or two of pork, was drifted astern. He nabbed it as a famishing politician an office. He was a monster in strength as well as size, and made the sea foam with his struggles to break away. It required four or five sailors to draw him in; and when on deck he cleared a pretty broad circle by his ferocious sweep. But he was soon overmastered, deprived of his head and tail by the axe, and cut up into pieces accommodated to the sailors’ culinary apparatus. Many, as they ate him, derived their keenest relish from their inherited antipathy to his species.
Thursday, May 28. We have had through the day scarce a breath of wind; the thermometer has ranged at 85; the heat below has been quite insupportable. The sun set through a thick, stagnant atmosphere; our sails hung motionless, save an occasional flap against the mast, given them by the sluggish swing of the ship. This continued till six bells of the first watch, when the rain fell in a perfect deluge. The water formed an instant lake between the bulwarks of the spar-deck, fell through the hatches, and flooded us below. It was some minutes before the hatches could be hooded; and when they were, our last breath of fresh air was shut out. We continued in this situation through the night. The sun rose into a dim, murky haze, in which his beams were quenched long before they reached our position.
Friday, May 29. The most gorgeous sunsets I have ever witnessed at sea have been near the equator. We have just been watching one from the deck; all eyes were fastened upon its magnificent phases. The whole west appeared at first as if it had lost its steep wall, and seemed to stretch away like a limitless prairie in conflagration. It changed and presented itself as a wild, picturesque landscape; mountain forests were on fire, throwing their lurid flames upon the rushing torrents, and into the deep ravines, and upon the sleeping lakes. It changed again, and poured its splendors upon the bastions, domes, and turrets of a vast city. Princely palaces, columned temples, and monumental pyramids, soared into a crimson atmosphere. A rushing wind swept the aerial structures, and over their gigantic ruins rolled an ocean of flame. If this be sunset, what will that conflagration be which will at last wrap the world!
Saturday, May 30. We have been in a calm the greater part of the day. The mirror of the ocean has been broken only by the plunges of a huge whale. He rose at times within a few fathoms of our ship, blowing the brine almost into the faces of our crew. They would, if permitted, have retaliated with their harpoons; though the result would have been only the loss of their weapons, for the monster would have carried them off with as much ease as Samson the bodkins of Delilah. He tumbled around us for several hours, as if measuring his size and strength with that of our frigate. At last, with one great heave, made as if in pride and scorn, he plunged and disappeared. Long life to him. I like his independent bearing.
One of our seamen got tipsy to-day, and raised a disturbance on the berth-deck. How he managed to get a double dose from the grog-tub is not known. And yet he alleges his liquor came from that nuisance which the law has sanctioned. I have taken some pains, during the long period that I have been in the navy, to ascertain the causes of the offences which have called for punishment; and from these inquiries I am clearly of the opinion, that these offences, in nine cases out of ten, are connected with ardent spirits; and are committed, in almost every case, by those who draw the whisky-ration provided by the government. I am clear in the conviction, that any statutes intended to restrain or punish intoxication in a national ship, must be without moral force so long as our legislation panders to this appetite in the sailor. The government presents itself before the seaman with a cup of whisky in one hand and a cat-o’-nine tails in the other. Here, my good fellow, drink this; but if you drink any more, then look out for these cats. It is amazing that such a flagrant violation of every principle of justice and humanity should escape the reprobation and even oblique animadversion of the department, and be left to the remonstrances of those who hold no official relation to the navy.