ermined against the match, and still inexplicably
countermined his wooing. With a dolorous heart he mildly yielded to what
seemed his fatality; and more intrepid in facing peril for himself, than
in endangering others by maintaining his rights (for he was now
one-and-twenty), resolved once more to retreat, and quit his blue hills
for the bluer billows.

A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded
misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous
distressed. The ocean brims with natural griefs and tragedies; and into
that watery immensity of terror, man's private grief is lost like a
drop.

Travelling on foot to Providence, Rhode Island, Israel shipped on board
a sloop, bound with lime to the West Indies. On the tenth day out, the
vessel caught fire, from water communicating with the lime. It was
impossible to extinguish the flames. The boat was hoisted out, but owing
to long exposure to the sun, it needed continual bailing to keep it
afloat. They had only time to put in a firkin of butter and a ten-gallon
keg of water. Eight in number, the crew entrusted themselves to the
waves, in a leaky tub, many leagues from land. As the boat swept under
the burning bowsprit, Israel caught at a fragment of the flying-jib,
which sail had fallen down the stay, owing to the charring, nigh the
deck, of the rope which hoisted it. Tanned with the smoke, and its edge
blackened with the fire, this bit of canvass helped them bravely on
their way. Thanks to kind Providence, on the second day they were picked
up by a Dutch ship, bound from Eustatia to Holland. The castaways were
humanely received, and supplied with every necessary. At the end of a
week, while unsophisticated Israel was sitting in the maintop, thinking
what should befall him in Holland, and wondering what sort of unsettled,
wild country it was, and whether there was any deer-shooting or
beaver-trapping there, lo! an American brig, bound from Piscataqua to
Antigua, comes in sight. The American took them aboard, and conveyed
them safely to her port. There Israel shipped for Porto Rico; from
thence, sailed to Eustatia.

Other rovings ensued; until at last, entering on board a Nantucket ship,
he hunted the leviathan off the Western Islands and on the coast of
Africa, for sixteen months; returning at length to Nantucket with a
brimming hold. From that island he sailed again on another whaling
voyage, extending, this time, into the great South Sea