Two Years Before the Mast
She had no more life in her than if she were water-logged. The log was hove several times; but she was doing her best. We had hardly patience with her, but the older sailors said—"Stand by! you'll see her work herself loose in a week or two, and then she'll walk up to Cape Horn like a race-horse."
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
Nothing carries you so entirely to a place, and makes you feel so perfectly at home, as a newspaper.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
The captain, who watched her with his glass, said that she was armed, and full of men, and showed no colors.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
asked him the reason of this, and found that he was fully possessed with the notion that Fins are wizards, and especially have power over winds and storms. I tried to reason with him about it, but he had the best of all arguments, that from experience, at hand, and was not to be moved.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
It is nearly always impossible to change the mind of somebody who has overwhelming circumstantial proofs at their disposal.
It was surprising to see how much soap and fresh water did for the complexions of many of us; how much of what we supposed to be tan and sea-blacking, we got rid of.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
If there is on earth an instance where a little leaven may leaven the whole lump, it is that of the religious shipmaster.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
Death is at all times solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man dies on shore; his body remains with his friends, and "the mourners go about the streets;" but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it, which give to it an air of awful mystery.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
The calms here are unlike those in most parts of the world, for there is always such a high sea running, and the periods of calm are so short, that it has no time to go down; and vessels, being under no command of sails or rudder, lie like logs upon the water.
Richard Henry Dana • Two Years Before the Mast
Such an inhospitable place.
they sometimes appeared to me to be a people on whom a curse had fallen, and stripped them of everything but their pride, their manners, and their voices.