"By this time, for my part, all my wishes for some ticklish adventure were almost gone, when I thought of our feelings at the loss of the boat, as well as the number of innocent young creatures on board, with Lota Hyde herself amongst them; while here had I got myself fairly set down for a raw griffin. Yet neither Westwood nor I, unless it came to the very worst, could venture to make himself openly useful! I was puzzled both what to think of our exact case, and what to do; whereas a pretty short time in these latitudes, as the foremast-man had said, might finish our business altogether; indeed, the whole look of things, somehow or other, at that moment, had a strange unsettled touch about it, out of which one unaccustomed to those parts might be sure some change would come. The air, a little ago, was quite suffocating, the heat got greater; and the breeze, though it seemed to strengthen aloft, at times sank quietly out of her lower canvas like a breath drawn in, and caught it again as quietly ere it fell to the masts. What with the slow huge heave of the water, as it washed glittering past, and what with the blue tropical sky overhead, getting paler and paler at the horizon astern, from fair heat--while the sunlight and the white haze on our larboard beam, made it a complete puzzle to behold--why, I felt just like some fellow in one of those stupid dreams after a heavy supper, with nothing at all in them, when you don't know how long or how often you've dreamt it before. Deuce the hand or foot you can stir, and yet you've a notion of something horrid that's sure to come upon you.