Herman Melville

Typee Herman Melville

Six months at sea! Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of sight of land; cruising after the sperm whale beneath the scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the widerolling Pacific the sky above, the sea around, and nothing else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were all exhausted. There is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam. Those glorious bunches of bananas, which once decorated our stern and quarter deck, have, alas, disappeared! and the delicious oranges which hung suspended from our tops and stays they, too, are gone! Yes, they are all departed, and there is nothing left us but salt horse and sea biscuit. Oh! ye state room sailors, who make so much ado about a fourteen days' passage across the Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations and hardships of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting, lunching, dining off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking champagne-punch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little cabinets of mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with nothing to disturb you but 'those good for nothing tars, shouting and tramping overhead', what would ye say to our six months out of sight of land?