during which time we drifted about, backing and filling, in the doldrums, hearing not so much as a whisper of the wind nor the flapping of a sail. But for the long, huge, heaving swell of old ocean’s mighty bosom, I might say that we were in the ocean’s graveyard.
There is a dreary monotony in a dead calm at sea which vividly calls to mind Byron’s striking pen-picture:
"The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their depths;
Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell piecemeal as they dropped.
They slept on the abyss without a surge;
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave;
The moon, their mistress, had expired before
The winds were withered in the stagnant air
And the clouds perished."
