With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these
straits; Ahab purposing to pass through them into the Javan sea, and thence, cruising northwards, over waters known to be frequented here and there by the Sperm whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands, and gain the far coast of Japan, in time for the great whaling season there.
The tides sweep through Carquinez
Straits as in a mill-race, and the full ebb was on when I stumbled overboard.
They depend upon local causes - the configuration of coasts, the shapes of
straits, the accidents of bold promontories round which they play their little part.
And by the time Demetrios made the Sonoma Hills, on the other side of the
Straits, we were so hopelessly outdistanced that Charley told me to slack off the sheet, and we squared away for Benicia.
I had before me the excellent charts of the
Straits of Torres, and I consulted them attentively.
The following night they passed through the
Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, which means in Arabic The Bridge of Tears, and the next day they put in at Steamer Point, north-west of Aden harbour, to take in coal.
Trent, who had seen men before in dire
straits, fed him from a spoon and forced brandy between his lips.
Here, though the weather was calm, we found the sea so rough, that we were tossed as in a high wind for two nights; whether this violent agitation of the water proceeded from the narrowness of the
strait, or from the fury of the late storm, I know not; whatever was the cause, we suffered all the hardships of a tempest.
In this
strait they sent a Deputation to a neighbouring tribe to consult the Oldest and Wisest Ape in All the World.
"Well, and when we come back to the top of the hill, which way must we take?"--"Why, you must keep the
strait road."--"But I remember there are two roads, one to the right and the other to the left."--"Why, you must keep the right-hand road, and then gu
strait vorwards; only remember to turn vurst to your right, and then to your left again, and then to your right, and that brings you to the squire's; and then you must keep
strait vorwards, and turn to the left."
If I had space I could prove tha South America was formerly here cut off by a
strait, joinin the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, like that of Magellan But it may yet be asked, how has the solid basalt bee moved?
Out on the blue sea, the distant splash of the paddles, the distant thump of the engines, told from time to time of the passage of steamers, entering or leaving the
strait between the island and the mainland.