The people of the steamer lived like terrestrial travelers who sleepily survey from the car-windows a succession of indefinite and dizzying views streaked by telegraph wires.
When his novitiate was ended he became second mate on a sailing vessel bound for Argentina for a cargo of wheat.

The slow day's run with little wind and the long equatorial calms permitted him to penetrate a little into the mysteries of the oceanic immensity, severe and dark, that for ancient peoples had been "the night of the abyss," "the sea of utter darkness," "the blue dragon that daily swallows the sun." He no longer regarded Father Ocean as the capricious and tyrannical god of the poets.

Everything in his depths was working with a vital regularity, subject to the general laws of existence.

Even the tempests roared within prescribed and charted quadrangles.
The fresh trade-winds pushed the bark toward the Southeast, maintaining a heavenly serenity in sky and sea.

Before the prow hissed the silken wings of flying fish, spreading out in swarms, like little squadrons of diminutive aeroplanes.
Over the masts and yards covered with canvas, the albatross, eagles of the Atlantic desert, traced their long, sweeping circles, flashing across the purest blue their great, sail-like wings.