"At Peace in the Pacific" by Jack London, 1907
"Time could not have dragged with such wonderful seascapes and cloudscapes—dawns that were like burning imperial cities under rainbows that arched nearly to the zenith."
In 1907 Jack London, his wife Charmian, and a small crew set sail on board his ketch the Snark from San Francisco Bay, visiting Hawaii and the South Pacific.
So the days passed. There was so much to be done that time never dragged. Had there been little to do, time could not have dragged with such wonderful seascapes and cloudscapes—dawns that were like burning imperial cities under rainbows that arched nearly to the zenith; sunsets that bathed the purple sea in rivers of rose-coloured light, flowing from a sun whose diverging, heaven-climbing rays were of the purest blue. Overside, in the heat of the day, the sea was an azure satiny fabric, in the depths of which the sunshine focused in funnels of light. Astern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a procession of milky-turquoise ghosts—the foam flung down by the hull of the Snark each time she floundered against a sea. At night the wake was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa slime resented our passing bulk, while far down could be observed the unceasing flight of comets, with long, undulating, nebulous tails—caused by the passage of the bonitas through the resentful medusa slime. And now and again, from out of the darkness on either hand, just under the surface, larger phosphorescent organisms flashed up like electric lights, marking collisions with the careless bonitas scurrying ahead to the good hunting just beyond our bowsprit.
From The Cruise of the Snark by Jack London, 1911, available on Amazon*
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Image: The Ocean by Frederick Judd Waugh, 1929, Avery Galleries, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, public domain.