weather.

Another hour, and at last Felix, awakening from his slumberous
condition, looked round and saw nothing but the waves. The shore he had
left had entirely disappeared, gone down; if there were land more lofty
on either hand, the haze concealed it. He looked again; he could
scarcely comprehend it. He knew the Lake was very wide, but it had never
occurred to him that he might possibly sail out of sight of land. This,
then was why the mariners would not quit the islands; they feared the
open water. He stood up and swept the horizon carefully, shading his
eyes with his hand; there was nothing but a mist at the horizon. He was
alone with the sun, the sky, and the Lake. He could not surely have
sailed into the ocean without knowing it? He sat down, dipped his hand
overboard and tasted the drops that adhered; the water was pure and
sweet, warm from the summer sunshine.

There was not so much as a swift in the upper sky; nothing but slender
filaments of white cloud. No swallows glided over the surface of the
water. If there were fishes he could not see them through the waves,
which were here much larger; sufficiently large, though the wind was
light, to make his canoe rise and fall with their regular rolling. To
see fishes a calm surface is necessary, and, like other creatures, they
haunt the shallows and the shore. Never had he felt alone like this in
the depths of the farthest forest he had penetrated. Had he contemplated
beforehand the possibility of passing out of sight of land, when he
found that the canoe had arrived he would probably have been alarmed and
anxious for his safety. But thus stumbling drowsily into the solitude of
the vast Lake, he was so astounded with his own discovery, so absorbed
in thinking of the immense expanse, that the idea of danger did not
occur to him.

Another hour passed, and he now began to gaze about him more eagerly for
some sight of land, for he had very little provision with him, and he
did not wish to spend the night upon the Lake. Presently, however, the
mist on the horizon ahead appeared to thicken, and then became blue, and
in a shorter time than he expected land came in sight. This arose from
the fact of its being low, so that he had approached nearer than he knew
before recognising it. At the time when he was really out of sight of
the coast, he was much further from the hilly land left behind than from
the low country in front, and not in the mathematical centre, as he had