pheric air through their lungs, in place of
water through the gills, having a double heart and warm blood, like land
animals. Their blow-holes on the top of the head answer to the nostrils
of terrestrial animals. Many of these simple facts were quite new to
some of our intelligent companions.

Flying-fish were frequently seen, queer little creatures with the nature
of a fish and the ambition of a bird. Dolphins sometimes played round
the ship for hours together, and a few hideous man-eating sharks kept in
our wake day after day, as if they hoped for a stray victim to tumble
from the decks and appease their cannibal appetites. The sea-gulls,
already mentioned, with tireless pinions followed the ship thousands of
miles to pick up the refuse from the cook's galley,--the mystery being
how they could sustain such continuous flight, for though they were seen
to light upon the water it was but for a moment, and they did not fail
to keep up with the Belgic in her steady headway. Save the objects
named there was nothing to engage the eye except the endless expanse of
waters, which seemed to typify infinite space. Our course did not lie in
the track of commerce, nor did we sight ship or land from the hour we
sank the shores of America until just three weeks later, when the
picturesque coast-line of Japan appeared upon the horizon. It was a
voyage of storms and calms combined, sometimes the ocean for days being
like a small inland lake, and then again in its rage tossing our ship
about as though she were a mere fishing skiff,--the waves often making a
clean breach over the hull, thoroughly drenching everything and
everybody who happened to be on deck.

Persons who have only witnessed a storm in narrow seas, or near the
coast, would be surprised to realize the difference in the waves on the
broad Pacific. The short, chopping sea is changed into long, heavy
swells, covering the expanse of waters with vast parallels separated by
deep valleys, the distance from crest to crest being from one hundred
and fifty to two hundred feet, when a heavy gale prevails. The height of
the waves is measured from the trough to the crest, and is of course
conjecture, but in a continuous storm which we realized on board the
Belgic was certainly some thirty feet. One aspect was to us an unsolved
problem: the storm being on our starboard quarter was so nearly aft as
to give us some idea of the velocity of the waves, which was clearly
much greater than th