Often, in mild, pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen,
and twenty hours on the stretch, they were engaged in the boats,
steadily pulling, or sailing, or paddling after the whales,
or for an interlude of sixty or seventy minutes calmly awaiting
their uprising; though with but small success for their pains.
At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth,
slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe;
and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves,
that like hearth-stone cats they purr against the gunwale;
these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil
beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger
heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember,
that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels
a certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he
regards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing
only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high
rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie:
as when the western emigrants' horses only show their erected ears,
while their hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.
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