with startling power. The ominous, the insignificant, the great, the
small, the wonderful, the commonplace--all appeared before my mental
vision in magical succession. Pages of my history were recalled which
had been so long forgotten that they seemed to belong to a previous
existence. I heard all the voices of the past laughing, crying,
telling what I had heard them tell in many corners of the earth.

The loneliness of my state wore off when the gale was high and I found
much work to do. When fine weather returned, then came the sense of
solitude, which I could not shake off. I used my voice often, at first
giving some order about the affairs of a ship, for I had been told
that from disuse I should lose my speech. At the meridian altitude of
the sun I called aloud, "Eight bells," after the custom on a ship at
sea. Again from my cabin I cried to an imaginary man at the helm, "How
does she head, there?" and again, "Is she on her course?" But getting
no reply, I was reminded the more palpably of my condition. My voice
sounded hollow on the empty air, and I dropped the practice. However,
it was not long before the thought came to me that when I was a lad I
used to sing; why not try that now, where it would disturb no one? My
musical talent had never bred envy in others, but out on the Atlantic,
to realize what it meant, you should have heard me sing. You should
have seen the porpoises leap when I pitched my voice for the waves and
the sea and all that was in it. Old turtles, with large eyes, poked
their heads up out of the sea as I sang "Johnny Boker," and "We'll Pay
Darby Doyl for his Boots," and the like. But the porpoises were, on
the whole, vastly more appreciative than the turtles; they jumped a
deal higher. One day when I was humming a favorite chant, I think it
was "Babylon's a-Fallin'," a porpoise jumped higher than the bowsprit.
Had the _Spray_ been going a little faster she would have scooped
him in. The sea-birds sailed around rather shy.