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By the aid of oars, several of which were fortunately in their possession, they kept the new craft in constant motion; quartering the square mile of sea-surface, upon which floated the fragments of the ill-fated Pandora. Many a waif did they pick up, and stow away on their new craft against the contingency of some future need.
Both the whales struck out incessantly with their mammoth flukes; their great tails, crashing upon the sea-surface, lashed it to mountains of foam. Our boats tossed as in a gale. Carried away by the pity and terror of the scene, we shouted threats and curses at the monsters, calling down on them in Marquesan the wrath of the sea-gods.
At the foot of Sanbe the mighty rock thus thrown by the Great Deity of Kitzuki may still be seen, it is alleged, even unto this day. More and more bare and rugged and ghastly the coast becomes as we journey on, and the sunken ledges more numerous, and the protruding rocks more dangerous, splinters of strata piercing the sea-surface from a depth of thirty fathoms.
Once, on the 15th July, I had seen a whale, or thought I did, spouting very remotely afar on the S.E. horizon; and on the 19th I distinctly saw a shoal of porpoises vaulting the sea-surface, in their swift-successive manner, northward: and seeing them, I had said pitifully to myself: 'Well, I am not quite alone in the world, then, my good God not quite alone.
We have seen that Parallax describes a certain experiment on the Bedford Level, which, if made as he states, would have shown certainly that something was wrong in the accepted system for a six-mile straight-edge along water would be as severe a blow to the belief in a round earth, as a straight line on the sea-surface from Queenstown to New York.
A few ships specked the sea-surface, which reflected a dull grey from the clouds, but otherwise the crossing was monotonous. We passed up the coast-line as far as the bend at Cape Grisnez, and so to Calais. Beyond this town were two sets of canals, one leading south and the other east. Follow the southern group and you will find our immediate destination, the aircraft depôt at Saint Gregoire.
Island, key, reef reef, key, island with the intervening gaps of azure-emerald water, bridged, bit by bit, by the coral, to-day a sea-surface, to-morrow a gray-white reef, next day a mangrove hedge, and the next an expanse of spectacular verdure and glistening gray-white sand. So Florida was born. So, at least, its southern portion was born, and is still in daily process of birth.
Before us, as we steamed on, the sea-surface appeared to become suddenly speckled with queer craft previously invisible light, long fishing- boats, with immense square sails of a beautiful yellow colour. I could not help remarking to my comrade how pretty those sails were; he laughed, and told me they were made of old tatami.
Only, in this case, the surface of the sea seems to rise from the beach below towards the distant horizon convexly not concavely; the reason of which I take to be this, that the waves, and especially long rollers or uniform large ripples, teach the eye to form true conceptions of the shape of the sea-surface even when the eye is deceived as to the position of the sea-horizon.
This lifting and draining of so much land would of itself have a profound influence on life-conditions, and then we must take account of its indirect influence. The moisture of the earlier period was probably due in the main to the large proportion of sea-surface and the absence of high land to condense it.
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