islands, reefs and submarine pillars that, when united together by the
work of a thousand years, are going to create a new land, an exchange
continent in case the human species should lose its present base in
some cataclysm of Nature.

The pulse of the blue god is the tides. The earth turns towards the
moon and the stars with a sympathetic rotation like that of the flowers
that turn towards the sun. Its most movable part--the fluid mass of the
atmosphere--dilates twice daily, swelling its cavities; and this
atmospheric suction, the work of universal attraction, is reflected in
the tidal waters. Closed seas, like the Mediterranean, scarcely feel
its effects, the tides stopping at their door. But on the oceanic coast
the marine pulsation vexes the army of the waves, hurrying them daily
to their assault of the steep cliffs, making them roar with fury among
the islands, promontories and straits, and impelling them to swallow up
extensive lands which they return hours afterward.

This salty sea, like our body, that has a heart, a pulse and a
circulation of two different bloods incessantly renewed and
transformed, becomes as furious as an organic creature when the
horizontal currents of its interior come to unite themselves with the
vertical currents descending from the atmosphere. The violent passage
of the winds, the crises of evaporation, and the obscure electrical
forces produce the tempests.

These are no more than cutaneous shudderings. The storms, so deadly for
mankind, merely contract the marine epidermis while the profound mass
of its waters remains in murky calm, fulfilling its great function of
nourishing and renewing life. Father Ocean completely ignores the
existence of the human insects that dare to slip across his surface in
microscopic cockle-shells. He does not inform himself as to the
incidents that may be taking place upon the roof of his dwelling. His
life continues on,--balanced, calm, infinite, engendering millions upon
millions of beings in the thousandth part of a second.

The majesty of the Atlantic on tropical nights made Ulysses forget the
wrathful storms of its black days. In the moonlight it was an immense
plane of vivid silver streaked with serpentine shadows. Its soft
doughlike undulations, replete with microscopic life, illuminated the
nights. The infusoria, a-tremble with love, glowed with a bluish
phosphorescence. The sea was like luminous milk. The foam breaking
against the prow sparkl