But how account for the Skyeman's gravity? Surely, it was based upon
no philosophic taciturnity; he was nothing of an idealist; an aerial
architect; a constructor of flying buttresses. It was inconceivable,
that his reveries were Manfred-like and exalted, reminiscent of
unutterable deeds, too mysterious even to be indicated by the
remotest of hints. Suppositions all out of the question.

His ruminations were a riddle. I asked him anxiously, whether, in any
part of the world, Savannah, Surat, or Archangel, he had ever a wife
to think of; or children, that he carried so lengthy a phiz. Nowhere
neither. Therefore, as by his own confession he had nothing to think
of but himself, and there was little but honesty in him (having
which, by the way, he may be thought full to the brim), what could I
fall back upon but my original theory: namely, that in repose, his
intellects stepped out, and left his body to itself.



CHAPTER XII
More About Being In An Open Boat


On the third morning, at break of day, I sat at the steering oar, an
hour or two previous having relieved Jarl, now fast asleep. Somehow,
and suddenly, a sense of peril so intense, came over me, that it
could hardly have been aggravated by the completest solitude.

On a ship's deck, the mere feeling of elevation above the water, and
the reach of prospect you command, impart a degree of confidence