Robert Michael Ballantyne

“ The jester, who had strong suspicions as to the good-faith of Omar, yet was not sufficiently in the confidence of the Dey to know exactly how matters stood, replied with caution—
"It is serene, as usual; not disturbed by untoward elements, as the air of a palace ought to be."
"That is well, Hadji Baba," returned Omar, in a confidential tone; "nevertheless thou knowest that the atmosphere in palaces is not always serene.—By the way, hast seen Sidi Hamet of late?"
"Not I," replied the other carelessly.
"He is no friend of thine, it would seem," said Omar. ”

“ The fearful sounds in the air and on the earth, the pealing thunder, the vivid lightning, the howling of the wind, the crash of falling trees and rocks, filled every one with affright, and many thought that the end of the world was at hand. Some fled to caverns for safety, for their frail houses were blown down, and the air was filled with the trunks and branches of trees, and even with fragments of rocks, carried along by the fury of the tempest. ”

“ If things go on as they have been doing of late, it is plain to me that we shall soon be at peace with all the world, and be under the necessity of turning our hands to farming or some such work for a livelihood!"
"Fear not, Sidi Omar," replied the Dey, with a short laugh, "this fair and ancient city has lived too long by war to be capable of condescending now to arts of peace. We shall have no difficulty in picking a quarrel with any nation that seems most desirable when our coffers begin to grow empty—in regard to which, let us be thankful, they show no signs at present. ”

“ Rebellious or even independent bearing will insure your speedy and severe humiliation. We 'dogs of Jews,'" continued Bacri, with a sad smile, "may seem to you to hang our heads rather low sometimes, but I have seen Christian men, as bold as you are, crawl upon the very dust before these Turks of Algiers."
"Our fate, then," said Francisco, "is, I suppose, and as I half suspected, to be slavery in that pirates' nest, Algiers?"
"I fear it is," replied the Jew, "unless Providence permits a storm to set you free; but let me correct your notion of Algiers. ”

“ We might enlarge endlessly on this great ocean current, but enough, we think, has been said to show that the sea, instead of being an ocean of unchanging drops, driven about at random by the power of stormy winds, is a mighty flood flowing in an appointed course—steady, regular, and systematic in its motions, varied and wonderful in its actions, benign and sweet in its influences, as it sweeps round and round the world, fulfilling the will of its great Creator. ”

“ So, then, when we next meet with a huge isolated boulder on any of our flat beaches, we may gaze at it with additional interest, when we reflect that, perchance, it was carried thither by the ocean, countless ages ago, from the arctic regions, on a gigantic raft of ice; after having been, at a still more remote period, torn from its cliffs by some mighty glacier and slowly rolled and rounded, for hundreds of years perhaps, down the scarred slopes of its native valley. ”

“ See my wife; tell her what we have seen; let her send Rais Ali into town with other servants—separately, not to attract attention—with baskets—full baskets, you understand?"
"Yis, Signer, full to bustin'" answered Bobi, with glittering eyes.
"Full as they can hold of all that is needful—she will understand that.—There, be off; lose no time," said the consul, thrusting a quantity of silver into the man's hand.
"Kurnul Langley," said Bobi, with enthusiasm glowing in his solitary eye, as he turned to go; "you—by the beard of the Prophet!—you're the ace of trumps!" ”

“ Without any definite intention as to what he meant to do, Flaggan sped along the road leading to his cave at Point Pescade, his chief feeling being a strong desire to get out of the sight of natives, that he might meditate alone on his future movements, which he felt must be prompt and decisive.
Before quite reaching his destination fortune favoured him. Coming round a rocky point of the coast, he observed a boat with one man in it rowing close inshore.
"That'll do," whispered Ted to himself, as he went behind a rock and hastily smeared his face and limbs with earth. ”

“ At length the sky begins to change. The horizon becomes black. Great masses of dark clouds rise out of the sea. Fitful gusts of wind begin to blow, and as suddenly to cease; and these signs of coming tempest keep dallying with each other, as if to tantalize the expectant creation. The lower part of the sky becomes deep red, the gathering clouds spread over the heavens, and a deep gloom is cast upon the earth and sea. ”

“ If you would attain that end, you must learn to curb your passions and use the powers of judgment with which your Maker has endowed you."
"Well, well, we will let that point hang on its peg in the meantime," returned Francisco impatiently; "but what wouldst thou advise? we are at your mercy."
"I will do what I can to prove that a Jew is not ungrateful," answered Bacri. "If they leave us unmolested here till night-fall we may find a way of escape for you, at all events from the city, but it is only such as desperate men would choose to take." ”

“ It bends the rays of the sun from their path to give us the aurora of the morning and the twilight of evening. It disperses and refracts their various tints to beautify the approach and the retreat of the orb of day. But for the atmosphere, sunshine would burst on us in a moment and fail us in the twinkling of an eye, removing us in an instant from midnight darkness to the blaze of noon. ”

“ At all events, we shall be ready. See, the breeze freshens. Go, call up the men and clear for action."
The breeze had indeed been freshening while he spoke, and now came down in a series of squalls that caused the piratical-looking craft to lie over as if she were about to capsize. The vessel which they were pursuing also bent over to the breeze and crowded all sail; for well did Francisco, its owner and padrone, know, from past experience, that Algerine corsairs were fast sailers, and that his only hope lay in showing them his heels! ”

“ WHAT THE OCEAN HAS TO SAY—ITS WHISPERS—ITS THUNDERS—ITS SECRETS.
HERE is a voice in the waters of the great sea. It calls to man continually. Sometimes it thunders in the tempest, when the waves leap high and strong, and the wild winds shriek and roar, as if to force our attention. Sometimes it whispers in the calm, and comes rippling on the shingly beach in a still, small voice, as if to solicit our regard. ”

“ Francisco, who was owner of his vessel and cargo as well as padrone or captain, entertained Bacri with accounts of his adventures on the sea, which the Jew returned in kind with his experiences of mercantile transactions in savage lands. Mariano drank in all that they said with youthful avidity, and the little old lady's mouth rippled responsive, like the aspen leaf to the breeze; while Lucien and Juliet, thus left to themselves, had no other resource than to entertain each other as best they could! ”

“ None of the fabulous conceptions of man, even though profoundly elaborated and brightly gilded with the coruscations of the most sparkling genius and fancy, ever produced so gorgeous a spectacle as may be witnessed there every summer day. Four or five suns in the blue sky, with lines and circles of light shooting from or circling round them! Ice in all its quaint, majestic, and shining forms, rendered still more quaint and grand by the influence of refraction ”

“ Ah! how many wretched men had learned the same bitter lesson in the same accursed city in days gone by—whose groans and cries, though unrecorded by the pen of man, have certainly been inscribed in the book of God's remembrance, and shall yet be brought into a brighter light than that of terrestrial day!
Omar Dey was a man of energy and decision. The instant it became known to him that England was at last stirred up to resent the insults which had been heaped upon her and other nations by the Algerines, he set about making preparations for defence on the vastest possible scale. ”

“ The midnight sun came out over the northern crest of the great berg, our late 'fast friend,' kindling variously-coloured fires on every part of its surface, and making the ice around us one great resplendency of gem-work—blazing carbuncles and rubies, and molten gold."
Very different indeed is the aspect of the winter night. Let the same authority speak, for he had great experience thereof.
On December 15th he writes: "We have lost the last vestige of our mid-day twilight. We cannot see print, and hardly paper. The fingers cannot be counted a foot from the eyes. ”

“ It is always wise to act with urbanity when it costs one nothing."
Achmet smiled, and a gleam of mischievous fun twinkled in his eyes as he observed his minister cast a furtive glance, suggestive of anything but urbanity, at the lion, which had playfully brushed its tan against his leg in passing.
"Your highness's judgment is always just," returned Sidi Omar; "and were we desirous of maintaining peace with Spain at present, it would be right to propitiate their consul; but, as you are aware, the treaties which we have recently formed with various nations are not to our advantage. ”

“ The offices of the atmosphere are thus quaintly enumerated by Maury:—"The atmosphere is an envelope or covering for the distribution of light and heat over the Earth; it is a sewer into which, with every breath we draw, we cast vast quantities of dead animal matter; it is a laboratory for purification, in which that matter is recompounded, and wrought again into wholesome and healthful shapes; it is a machine for pumping up all the rivers from the sea, and for conveying the water from the ocean to their sources in the mountains. ”

“ Before he could turn, the Irishman ran close to his side, seized him by the burnous, at the same time grasping his bridle, and pulled him out of the saddle with such sudden violence that he fell headlong to the ground, where he lay quite stunned by the fall. Flaggan instantly sprang into the saddle, as if he had been an accomplished cavalier, though in reality he knew no more about horses than an Esquimaux. However, a man who was accustomed to hold on to a top-sail-yard in a gale was not to be easily shaken off by an Arab charger. ”

“ It is not sufficient that man should become acquainted with the doings of his fellows on the sea. This is but one branch of general knowledge, and a very secondary one compared with that infinitely higher branch which treats of the workings of the Almighty in the ocean; workings which render it what it is—not merely a means of commercial enterprise for man and a home for fish, but also a great purifier and revivifier of the earth and sweetener of the atmosphere. God is the great first cause of all that is and that operates in the universe. ”

“ Flaggan had arranged that he was to put on the boar-dress in the town residence of Rais Ali. Being unwilling to attract the attention of the populace by passing through the streets in broad daylight, he determined to postpone his advent to an advanced part of the evening.
It was a clear, calm night when he left the country residence of the British consul, with a crescent moon to light him on his way. He had just issued from the garden gate, when an old man, clad in a half-monkish robe, advanced towards him with strides that would have done credit to a dragoon. ”

“ We may not, indeed, ever hope in this life to attain to perfect knowledge, nevertheless, by "searching" we may "find out wisdom;" and certain it is, that, although there undoubtedly must be a point of knowledge on any given subject which man cannot reach, there is in man a power incessantly to extend his knowledge and increase his powers of conception, by each successive effort that he makes in his course from the cradle to the grave. ”

“ Mariano laughed and followed his brother, and Ted Flaggan, muttering something about its being the "most strornar companion hatch he'd ever entered," followed suit.
A creep of two or three yards brought him into a cavern which was just high enough to admit of a man standing erect, and about eight or ten feet wide. At the farther extremity of it there was a small stone lamp, the dim light of which revealed the figure of stout Francisco Rimini sound asleep on a bundle of straw, wrapped negligently in his burnous, and with a stone for his pillow. ”

“ Waves travel at a rate which increases in proportion to their size and the depth of water in which they are formed. Every one knows that on most lakes they are comparatively small and harmless. In some lakes, however, such as Lake Superior in North America, which is upwards of three hundred miles long, the waves are so formidable as to resemble those of the ocean, and they are capable of producing tremendous effects. But the waves of the sea, when roused to their greatest height, and travelling at their greatest speed, are terrible to behold. Their force is absolutely irresistible. ”