These words followed each other mechanically, confused, and scarcely

articulated, as if he did not care to pronounce them. They floated out

of his mouth and dispersed. Soliloquy is the smoke exhaled by the inmost

fires of the soul.

The skipper broke in, "My lord!"

The old man, perhaps rather deaf as well as very thoughtful, went on,--

"Too few stars, and too much wind. The breeze continually changes its

direction and blows inshore; thence it rises perpendicularly. This

results from the land being warmer than the water. Its atmosphere is

lighter. The cold and dense wind of the sea rushes in to replace it.

From this cause, in the upper regions the wind blows towards the land

from every quarter. It would be advisable to make long tacks between the

true and apparent parallel. When the latitude by observation differs

from the latitude by dead reckoning by not more than three minutes in

thirty miles, or by four minutes in sixty miles, you are in the true

course."

The skipper bowed, but the old man saw him not. The latter, who wore

what resembled an Oxford or Gottingen university gown, did not relax his

haughty and rigid attitude. He observed the waters as a critic of waves

and of men. He studied the billows, but almost as if he was about to

demand his turn to speak amidst their turmoil, and teach them something.

There was in him both pedagogue and soothsayer. He seemed an oracle of

126

The Man Who Laughs