THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



deem that by the morning light a sullen plunge 

 will ease the boat of the night's dead, and they 

 are quite ready to furnish the living grave. 



The following vivid picture, though given in a 

 work of fiction, is so manifestly drawn from the 

 life, that I shall be pardoned for citing it, the 

 more because I have had some opportunities of 

 personally verifying this writer's oceanic delinea- 

 tions, and have observed their remarkable truth- 

 fulness— 



"The night following our abandonment of the 

 ship was made memorable by a remarkable spec- 

 tacle. Slumbering in the bottom of the boat, 

 Jarl and I were suddenly awakened by Samoa. 

 Starting, we beheld the ocean of a pallid white 

 colour, coruscating all over with tiny golden 

 sparkles. But the pervading hue of the water 

 cast a cadaverous gleam upon the boat, so that 

 we looked to each other like ghosts. For many 

 rods astern, our wake was revealed in a line of 

 rushing illuminated foam; while, here and there 

 beneath the surface, the tracks of sharks were 

 denoted by vivid, greenish trails, crossing and 

 recrossing each other in every direction. Further 

 away, and distributed in clusters, floated on the 

 sea, like constellations in the heavens, innumerable 

 medusae, a species of small, round, refulgent fish, 

 only to be met with in the South Seas and the 

 Indian Ocean. 



"Suddenly, as we gazed, there shot high into the 

 air a bushy jet of flashes, accompanied by the un- 

 mistakeable deep-breathing sound of a sperm 

 whale. Soon the sea all round us spouted in 

 fountains of fire ; and vast forms, emitting a glare 

 from their flanks, and ever and anon raising their 

 heads above water, and shaking off the sparkles, 

 shewed where an immense shoal of cachalots had 

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