| You talk about happy creatures--did you ever notice a porpoise?--well
there ain't anything in heaven here superior to that happiness. - Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, Vol. 2 (1877-1883), p. 275. |
 |
A flash so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, with every curve of its body and the "break" spreading away from its head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor of living fire. And my, but it was coming at a lightning gait! Almost before you could think, this monster of light, fifty feet long, would go flaming and storming by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance whence he came you would see another flash; and another and another and another, and see them turn into sea-serpents on the instant; and once sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us, a swarm of wiggling curves, a moving conflagration, a vision of bewildering beauty, a spectacle of fire and energy whose equal the most of those people will not see again until after they are dead.
It was porpoises--porpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They presently
collected in a wild and magnificent jumble under the bows, and there they played
for an hour, leaping and frollicking and carrying on, turning summersaults in
front of the stem or across it and never getting hit, never making a miscalculation,
though the stem missed them only about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises
of the ordinary length --eight or ten feet--but every twist of their bodies
sent a long procession of united and glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble
was an enchanting thing to look at, and we stayed out the performance; one cannot
have such a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the kitten of
the sea; he never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing but fun and play.
But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until that night. It was near a
center of civilization, and he could have been drinking.
- Following the Equator
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