The Big Blue

For the sea calls to me, by God, and for every night I spent on deck, in calm seas or rough, staring up at that moon, impossibly bright; and for the first night I saw the Milky Way and my breath caught in my throat; and the first night I saw the Northern Lights shimmer in the sky: this small exerpt from H.M.S. Surprise by Patrick O’Brian:

The sun beat down from its noon-day height upon Bombay, imposing a silence upon that teeming city, so that even in the deepest bazaars the steady beat of the surf could be heard – the panting of the Indian Ocean, dull ochre under a sky too hot to be blue, a sky -waiting for the south-west monsoon; and at the same moment far, far to the westward, far over Africa and beyond, it heaved up to the horizon and sent a fiery dart to strike the limp royals and topgallants of the Surprise as she lay becalmed on the oily swell a little north of the line and some thirty degrees west of Greenwich. The blaze of light moved down to the topsails, to the courses, shone upon the snowy deck, and it was day. Suddenly the whole of the east was day; the sun lit the sky to the zenith and for a moment the night could be seen over the starboard bow, fleeting away towards America. Mars, setting a handsbreadth above the western rim, went out abruptly; the entire bowl of the sky grew brilliant and the dark sea returned to its daily blue, deep blue.