It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of
these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you
are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning;
and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness
of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of,
and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never
pierce you out.
Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and
prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself;
for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm;
and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle
holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion;
so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines
about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play--
this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other
aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live
enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks;
but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death,
that mortals realize the silent, subtle, everpresent perils of life.
And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat,
you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though
seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon,
by your side.
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