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"'Oh, hush thee my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green." There was the slow, restful, swinging motion of the waves in that music; the coolness of the deep green seas. How quickly it took away the fever and the aching, and left the healing of sleep in its wake! "'Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow.
Then we heard voices singing together in a sailor-song which had a refrain not quite suited to the day, according to common opinions, having a refrain about a lad who sailed away on bounding billow and left poor Jane to wear the willow; but what's a lass's tears of brine to the Spanish Main and a flask of wine?
We feel that it would be a fine thing to be off soundings, greeting the bounding billow, not to say the bar-room steward; and yet, being a cautious soul of reservations all compact, we must admit that about the time we got abreast of New Dorp we would be homesick for our favourite subway station.
I can see him still, foreshortened by our bird's-eye view into a Turkish fez and a fringe of white hair and red neck, a billow of dressing-gown, and bare heels peeping out of bedroom slippers at every step that we could follow; but no face all the way down, because he was a bent old boy who never looked like looking up.
The surf, at the particular spot we steered for, did not break on the shore in a rolling curling wave, as it usually does, but smoothed away under the lee of a small sandy promontory that ran out into the sea, about half a cable's length to windward, and then slid up the smooth white sand without breaking, in a deep clear green swell, for the space of twenty yards, gradually shoaling, the colour becoming lighter and lighter until it frothed away in a shallow white fringe, that buzzed as it receded back into the deep green sea, until it was again propelled forward by the succeeding billow.
From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak! Aye, aye! thy silence, then, THAT voices thee. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion." "God keep me! keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly.
There was a pause, a lurch, a crack of breaking fixtures; and the next moment the schooner, torn away from her fastenings by the force of a monstrous upheaving wave, and thrown around at right angles to the unharmed prey so nearly within her clutches, was seen rolling and reeling on the top of a billow, fifty yards distant.
I hadn't had a smoke in four hours. I owned a single good cigar, the last of my importation. I lighted it and blew forth a snowy billow of heavenly aroma. I know something about human nature, even the feminine side of it. A presentable young man with a roll of aromatic tobacco seldom falls to win the confidence of those about him. With that cloud of smoke the raw edge of formality smoothed down.
If his order was meant for the Buss it was flatly disobeyed, for that charming example of naval architecture, presenting her bluff bows to the billow, snapt the cable and went quietly off to leeward! "All hands ahoy!" roared William Smart as he rushed to the foresail halyards. The summons was not needed. All the men were present, and each knew exactly what to do in the circumstances.
He was caught just in the comb of the wave, and it upset him, making him turn a complete somerset, as his companion had done; but he was master of himself, and when he came up, he appeared to dive through the crest of another billow, and came out close alongside Scott's boat, near the bow.
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