What else could one expect? They had passed upon the windʼs–eyes so adverse a decision—without hearing counsel on either side—that really, to escape ophthalmia, it must close its eyelids. So everything was heavy slumber, sleep of parboiled weariness. Where sea and sky met one another—if they could do it without moving—the rim of dazzled vision whitened to a talc–like glimmer. Within that circle all was tintless, hard as steel, yet dull and oily, smitten flat with heat and haze. Not a single place in sky and sea to which a man might point his finger, and say to his mate, “Look there!” No skir of fish, not even a sharkʼs fin, or a mitching dolphin, no dip of wing, no life at all, beyond the hot rim of the ship, or rather now the “vessel,” where many a man lay frying, with scarcely any lard left. And oh, how the tar and the pitch did smell, running like a cankered apricot–tree, and the steam of the bilge–water found its way up, and reeked through the yawning deck–seams! But if any man durst look over the side (being gifted with an Egyptian skull, for to any thin head the sunstroke is death, when taken upon the crown), that daring man would have seen in blue water, some twenty fathoms below him, a world of life, and work, and taste, complex, yet simple, more ingenious than his wisest labours. For here no rough rivers profane the sea with a flood of turbulent passion, like a foul oath vented upon the calm summer twilight; neither is there strong indraught from the tossing of distant waters, nor rolling leagues of mountain surf, as in the Indian Ocean. All is heat and sleep above, where the sheer dint of the sun lies; but down in the depth of those glassy halls they heed not the fervour of the noon–blaze, nor the dewy sparkle of starlight. “Typhoon by–and–by,” said the first mate, yawning, but too lazy to stretch, under the awning of a sail which they wetted with a hydropult, a most useful thing on shipboard, as well as in a garden. “Not a bit of it,” answered the captain, looking still more lazy, but managing to suck cold punch. “We shall see,” was all the mate said. It was a deal too hot to argue, and he was actually drinking ale, English bottled ale, hoisted up from a dip in blue water, but as hot as the pipes in a pinery.