Alhambra. Vistas seemed leading to worlds beyond. To and fro, and all
over the towers of this Nineveh in the sky, flew troops of birds.
Watching them long, one crossed my sight, flew through a low arch,
and was lost to view. My spirit must have sailed in with it; for
directly, as in a trance, came upon me the cadence of mild billows
laving a beach of shells, the waving of boughs, and the voices of
maidens, and the lulled beatings of my own dissolved heart, all
blended together.

Now, all this, to be plain, was but one of the many visions one has
up aloft. But coming upon me at this time, it wrought upon me so,
that thenceforth my desire to quit the Arcturion became little short
of a frenzy.



CHAPTER II
A Calm


Next day there was a calm, which added not a little to my impatience
of the ship. And, furthermore, by certain nameless associations
revived in me my old impressions upon first witnessing as a landsman
this phenomenon of the sea. Those impressions may merit a page.

To a landsman a calm is no joke. It not only revolutionizes his
abdomen, but unsettles his mind; tempts him to recant his belief in
the eternal fitness of things; in short, almost makes an infidel of
him.