Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 5.djvu/43

Rh I devoured with eagerness the soft foam which whitened the sea as far as the eye could reach; and how often did I share the emotion of the majority of the crew when some capricious whale raised its black back above the waves! The poop of the vessel was crowded in a moment. The cabins poured forth a torrent of sailors and officers, each with heaving breast and troubled eye watching the course of the cetacean. I looked, and looked, till I was nearly blind, while Conseil, always phlegmatic, kept repeating in a calm voice: "If, sir, you would not squint so much, you would see better!"

But vain excitement! the Abraham Lincoln checked its speed and made for the animal signaled, a simple whale, or common cachalot, which soon disappeared amid a storm of execration.

The weather was good. The voyage was being accomplished under the most favorable auspices. It was then the bad season in Australia, the July of that zone corresponding to our January in Europe; but the sea was beautiful and easily scanned round a vast circumference. The 20th of July, the tropic of Capricorn was cut, and the 27th of the same month we crossed the equator on the 110th meridian. This passed, the frigate took a more decided westerly direction, and scoured the central waters of the Pacific. Commander Farragut thought, and with reason, that it was better to remain in deep water, and keep clear of continents or islands, which the beast itself seemed to shun (perhaps because there was not enough water for him! suggested the greater part of the crew). The frigate passed at some distance from the Marquesas and the Sandwich Islands, crossed the tropic of Cancer, and made for the China Seas. We were on the theater of the last diversions of the monster; and to say truth, we no longer lived on board. Hearts palpitated, fearfully preparing themselves for future incurable aneurism. The entire ship's crew were undergoing a nervous excitement, of which I can give no idea; they could not eat, they could not sleep; twenty times a day, a misconception or an optical illusion of some sailor seated on the taffrail would cause dreadful perspirations, and these emotions, twenty times repeated, kept us in a state of excitement so violent that a reaction was unavoidable.