12. CHAPTER XII.
MORE ABOUT BEING IN AN OPEN BOAT.
On the third morning, at break of day, I sat at the steering
oar, an hour or two previous having relieved Jarl, now
fast asleep. Somehow, and suddenly, a sense of peril so intense,
came over me, that it could hardly have been aggravated
by the completest solitude.
On a ship's deck, the mere feeling of elevation above the
water, and the reach of prospect you command, impart a
degree of confidence which disposes you to exult in your fancied
security. But in an open boat, brought down to the
very plane of the sea, this feeling almost wholly deserts you.
Unless the waves, in their gambols, toss you and your chip
upon one of their lordly crests, your sphere of vision is little
larger than it would be at the bottom of a well. At best,
your most extended view in any one direction, at least, is in
a high, slow-rolling sea; when you descend into the dark,
misty spaces, between long and uniform swells. Then, for
the moment, it is like looking up and down in a twilight
glade, interminable; where two dawns, one on each hand,
seem struggling through the semi-transparent tops of the
fluid mountains.
But, lingering not long in those silent vales, from watery
cliff to cliff, a sea-chamois, sprang our solitary craft,—a goat
among the Alps!
How undulated the horizon; like a vast serpent with ten
thousand folds coiled all round the globe; yet so nigh, apparently,
that it seemed as if one's hand might touch it.
What loneliness; when the sun rose, and spurred up the
heavens, we hailed him as a wayfarer in Sahara the sight
of a distant horseman. Save ourselves, the sun and the
Chamois seemed all that was left of life in the universe.
We yearned toward its jocund disk, as in strange lands the
traveler joyfully greets a face from home, which there had
passed unheeded. And was not the sun a fellow-voyager?
were we not both wending westward? But how soon he
daily overtook and passed us; hurrying to his journey's end.
When a week had gone by, sailing steadily on, by day
and by night, and nothing in sight but this self-same sea,
what wonder if disquieting thoughts at last entered our hearts?
If unknowingly we should pass the spot where, according to
our reckoning, our islands lay, upon what shoreless sea would
we launch? At times, these forebodings bewildered my
idea of the positions of the groups beyond. All became
vague and confused; so that westward of the Kingsmill
isles and the Radack chain, I fancied there could be naught
but an endless sea.
