Astern, Deep Down, When There Was A
Breeze, Bubbled A Procession Of Milky-Turquoise Ghosts - The Foam
Flung Down By The Hull Of The Snark Each Time She Floundered Against
A Sea.
At night the wake was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa
slime resented our passing bulk, while far down could be observed
the unceasing flight of comets, with long, undulating, nebulous
tails - caused by the passage of the bonitas through the resentful
medusa slime.
And now and again, from out of the darkness on either
hand, just under the surface, larger phosphorescent organisms
flashed up like electric lights, marking collisions with the
careless bonitas skurrying ahead to the good hunting just beyond our
bowsprit.
We made our easting, worked down through the doldrums, and caught a
fresh breeze out of south-by-west. Hauled up by the wind, on such a
slant, we would fetch past the Marquesas far away to the westward.
But the next day, on Tuesday, November 26, in the thick of a heavy
squall, the wind shifted suddenly to the southeast. It was the
trade at last. There were no more squalls, naught but fine weather,
a fair wind, and a whirling log, with sheets slacked off and with
spinnaker and mainsail swaying and bellying on either side. The
trade backed more and more, until it blew out of the northeast,
while we steered a steady course to the southwest. Ten days of
this, and on the morning of December 6, at five o'clock, we sighted
land "just where it ought to have been," dead ahead.
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