Mardi Volume 1 Chapter 2 - A Calm

In which the narrator reflects upon the strange and unsettling stillness of a sea calm, revealing how it confounds the mind and spirit of a landsman unaccustomed to such inert vastness. With vivid and almost haunted rumination, he describes the paralysis of both body and will, beset by meditations on eternity and the helplessness imposed by the unyielding quietude of the ocean.