but Abel Keeling's Law was different; no better, no worse, only
different. The Hand of God, that drew chips and galleons, must work by
some method; and Abel Keeling's eyes were dully on the pipkin again as if
he sought the method there....

Then conscious thought left him for a space, and when he resumed it was
without obvious connection.

Oars, of course, were the thing. With oars, men could laugh at calms.
Oars, that only pinnaces and galliasses now used, had had their
advantages. But oars (which was to say a method, for you could say if you
liked that the Hand of God grasped the oar-loom, as the Breath of God
filled the sail)--oars were antiquated, belonged to the past, and meant a
throwing-over of all that was good and new and a return to fine lines, a
battle-formation abreast to give effect to the shock of the ram, and a
day or two at sea and then to port again for provisions. Oars ... no.
Abel Keeling was one of the new men, the men who swore by the line-ahead,
the broadside fire of sakers and demi-cannon, and weeks and months
without a landfall. Perhaps one day the wits of such men as he would
devise a craft, not oar-driven (because oars could not penetrate into the
remote seas of the world)--not sail-driven (because men who trusted to
sails found themselves in an airless, three-mile strait, suspended
motionless between cloud and water, ever gliding to a wall of rock)--but
a ship ... a ship ...

"_To Noah and his sons with him
God spake, and thus said He:
A covenant set I up with you
And your posterity_--"