The night had been throughout very hot and sultry, the sky as dark as pitch, and now the day broke very loweringly. Thick masses of heavy clouds rolled in from the offing, whirling overhead like the smoke from a steamer's chimney-stack. It lightened in the south east, now and then, and as we drew out from the land, the distant grumble of the thunder blended hoarsely with the increasing noise of the surf, as the swell, at one time, surged howling up the cavernous indentations on the ironbound coast, ebbing, with a loud shoaling rush, like a rapid river over shallows; at another, pitched in sullen _thuds_ against the rocks, and reverberated from their iron ribs with a deafening roar, that made air and sea tremble again. As we got out of the bay, the growling of the sea increased, and came more hollow, the noise being reflected from the land in sounding echoes. Close to, the waves rolled on in long sluggish undulations; in colour and apparent consistency as if they had been molten lead; the very divers that we disturbed on their dull grey surface, ran along, leaving dotted trails, as if it had been semi-fluid, or as if some peculiarity in the atmosphere had rendered them unable to raise themselves into the murky air. Shoals of sea-mews, and other waterfowl, were floating lightly, and twinkling with their white wings in the cold grey dawning, as we crept through amongst them and disturbed them, like clusters of feathers scattered on the glass-like heaving of the dark water, afraid apparently to leave the vicinity of the land; every now and then the different groups would take up in succession a loud screaming, like a running fire passing along the line, when all would be still again. Birds that hovered between an English martin and Mother Cary's chickens in appearance, kept dipping, and rising, and circling all round us; and the steady flying pelican skimmed close to the tops of the swell, on poised and motionless wing, as straight as a pointblank cannon shot; while a shoal of porpoises were dappling the surface to windward, with their wheel-like gambols. "What the deuce makes the fish jump so this morning?" said I to Lennox, as several dolphins sprang into the air ahead of the Moonbeam--"What is that?"--a puff of white vapour, with a noise for all the world like a blast of steam, rose close to us. "The blowing of a whale, sir;" and immediately thereafter the back of the monster, like a black reef, or the bottom of a capsized launch, was hove out of the water, and then disappeared slowly with a strong eddy; his subaqueous track being indicated on the surface by a long line of bubbles, and _swirling_ ripples, like the wake of a ship cleaving the water rapidly, always growing stronger and more perceptible as he neared the surface to breathe again. "Ah! that accounts for it; there again he rises."