I daresay you
know a pretty song about the ocean, beginning in this way (it is meant to
be sung by a sailor):
"The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies."
The philosophers say that if our earth were quiet and at rest, instead of
being the never-resting traveller that it is, the great mass of water would
surround it everywhere, just as the atmosphere does. We cannot imagine such
a thing, but we can see many ways in which the two great oceans are alike.
Both have their waves. Though we cannot see those in the world of air, we
can hear them, as you know.
Both are colourless in themselves, yet blue in their heights and depths.
Both are made of two airs or gases, beautifully combined.
At first sight we might say that this is almost too strange a tale to be
a true one; for few things seem more unlike than air and water. You will
think it stranger still when I tell you that one of the gases which goes
to form water is that same oxygen which gives life to the air we breathe,
and which will burn so fast if only a tiny spark comes in contact with it;
while the other is the gas called hydrogen, the "water-maker," which also
burns. And yet these two fiery gases make the water which the brave firemen
pump in streams upon a burning house to put out the flames.
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