"Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!" cried a foreboding voice in her wake.
"In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn us
your taffrail to show us your coffin!"
CHAPTER 132
The Symphony
It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air
was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust
and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells,
as Samson's chest in his sleep.
Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,
unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;
but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue,
rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were
the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.
But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades
and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex,
as it were, that distinguished them.
Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this
gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom.
And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion--
most seen here at the Equator--denoted the fond, throbbing trust,
the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.
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