It was a clear steel-blue day.

The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman''s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson''s chest in his sleep.

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds;

these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without;

those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.