There are no deep, hollow rumblings; except for that hissing, seething sound, the great billows rise and sink in silence; and you look over a tumbling waste of blue or green water, all laced, and dashed, and variegated with a thousand stripes, and streaks, and veins of white glancing froth, which embroider, as it were with lace, the dark masses of heaving and falling ocean. Hearing this sound, and seeing this sight, I tossed until the sun got high and warm. I felt no very poignant anguish, for my soul was clothed, as it were, in a species of lethargy—the livery of despair. Sometimes only I tried to pray, but thoughts and tongue would grow benumbed together. Once, indeed, I was for a time aroused. I heard a sharp little dash in the water, and a soft quackle, as of a sea-fowl. Looking up, I descried beside me two ducks of that species which we, in the Scottish seas, called marrots; they are white on the breast and neck, and brown above, and have very bright, glancing, yellow eyes. Moreover, they dive, and use their short wings under water, as other fowls do theirs in flying. By the appearance of these creatures I knew that land was, at farthest, within two days’ sail. There—tilting gaily over each sea—they swam for hours, seeming to look at me; sometimes they would dive, but they never went far from the wreck, always coming up and riding head to wind, with their keen yellow eyes fixed as I thought upon the poor drowning mariner. They seemed tame and fearless—for, indeed, what should they dread from me? Once, in a sort of melancholy mirth, I raised my arm threateningly, but they stirred neither wing nor leg to flee, lifting over seas which would make a great man-of-war work and groan to her very keel, but which these feathered ships, built by God, could outride without a film of down being washed aside from their white breasts.