nor, although watching closely, could we determine when the connection between sea and sky ceased—­one could not call it severed.  The point rising from the sea settled almost immediately amidst a small commotion, as of a whirlpool.  The tail depending from the cloud slowly shortened, and the mighty reservoir lost the vast bulge which had hung so threateningly above.  Just before the final disappearance of the last portion of the tube, a fragment of cloud appeared to break off.  It fell near enough to show by its thundering roar what a body of water it must have been, although it looked like a saturated piece of dirty rag in its descent.

For whole days and nights together we sometimes lay almost “as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean,” when the deep blue dome above matched the deep blue plain below, and never a fleck of white appeared in sky or sea.  This perfect stop to our progress troubled none, although it aggravates a merchant skipper terribly.  As for the objects of our search, they had apparently all migrated other-whither, for never a sign of them did we see.  Finbacks, a species of rorqual, were always pretty numerous, and as if they knew how useless they were to us, came and played around like exaggerated porpoises.  One in particular kept us company for several days and nights.  We knew him well, from a great triangular scar on his right side, near the dorsal fin.  Sometimes he would remain motionless by the side of the ship, a few feet below the surface, as distinctly in our sight as a gold-fish in a parlour globe; or he would go under the keel, and gently chafe his broad back to and fro along it, making queer tremors run through the vessel, as if she were scraping over a reef.  Whether from superstition or not I cannot tell, but I never saw any creature injured out of pure wantonness, except sharks, while I was on board the cachalot.  Of course, injuries to men do not count.  Had that finback attempted to play about a passenger ship in such a fashion, all the loungers on board would have been popping at him with their revolvers and rifles without ever a thought of compunction; yet here, in a vessel whose errand was whale-fishing, a whale enjoyed perfect immunity.  It was very puzzling.  At last my curiosity became too great to hear any longer, and I sought my friend Mistah Jones at what I considered a favourable opportunity.  I found him very gracious and communicative, and I got such a lecture on the natural history of the cetacea as I have never forgotten—­the outcome of a quarter-century’s experience of them, and afterwards proved by me to be correct in every detail, which latter is a great deal more than can be said of any written natural history that ever I came across.  But I will not go into that now.  Leaning over the rail, with the great rorqual laying perfectly still a few feet below, I was told to mark how slender and elegant were his proportions.  “Clipper-built,” my Mentor termed him.