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With an effort that left him gasping, he hauled himself up on top of the box, the carvings allowing him a purchase for his fingertips. The coffin settled down a few more inches. Lying with his chin against the edge, he reached down on both sides and paddled toward the shore. After a while, tiring, he slept again. When he awoke, he saw that the great moon had moved far, but that the sun had not advanced more than a few degrees.
The vast cloudlike creature through which he had plunged, and one of whose organs he had torn out, was gone. But in the west another one loomed. This was much lower than the first, and, when it got closer, he could see that hordes of strange creatures with wings like sails were tearing at it.
There were many different types of eaters, but there were several kinds, similar yet distinguishable, which he came to call air sharks. Since they were about five thousand feet high, they The body was shark-shaped, and the skin that covered the fragile bones was very thin. When one of the creatures got between Ishmael and the sun, its skeleton and internal organs would be silhouetted.
The end of the tail had two vertical fins more like a ship's rudder than a fish's fin. Both extended so far that they looked heavy enough to drag the air shark's tail down, but they, too, had diaphanous skin and thin bones.
The beasts apparently were dependent upon the wind for their main means of locomotion, though they could propel themselves somewhat with a sidewise motion of the tail that enabled the tail fins to be used as a shark's. The double pair of very long wings, like a dragonfly's, that extended from just behind the head, could be rotated almost 360 degrees and raised and lowered slowly. The black-and-white checked appendages were more sails than wings. But the beasts knew by instinct how to sail close-hauled against the wind, how to tack, how to do all the maneuvers that human sailors have to be taught.
The great russet-and-mushroom-colored cloud-creature swept overhead, harried and eaten alive -- if it was alive -- by the multitude of air sharks. Then it was gone to the east, blown toward the line of purple mountains far away.
Ishmael did not know why the first cloud-creature had been undisturbed by the scarlet check-winged predators and the second attracted so many. But he was glad that they had been absent when he had been born into this world.
He lay on his back while the coffin-canoe lifted and lowered with the quakes passing through the heavy waters. After a while, he saw another vast cloud, but this was pale red, and its outlines changed shape and area so swiftly that he doubted it was anything but a peculiar cloud. And why not peculiar? Was not everything in this world bound to be peculiar, except himself? And from the viewpoint of this world, was he also peculiar?
When it passed over him, a tentacle, or a pseudo-pod -- it was too blunt and shapeless to be a tentacle -- put out from the cloud toward the earth. The sun shone through it so that it looked more like a beam of dust motes than a living thing.
A few pieces of the pseudopod drifted by him and separated into tiny objects. They did not come close enough for a detailed examination by him. But against the dark blue sky the red things looked many-angled in the lower part. The upper part was umbrella-shaped and doubtless acted as a parachute.
Other creatures followed the vast red cloud as bats follow a cloud of insects or as whales follow a cloud of brit, the tiny creatures that compose the bedrock of all sea life and are swallowed and strained out of sea water by the mighty right whales.
Indeed, that analogy was not exaggerated. The monstrous things that spread their fin-sails and plowed into the red cloud, their giant mouths wide open, must be the right whales of the air of this world.
They were too high for Ishmael to have described them with particularity. But they were enormous, far larger than the sperm whale. Their bodies were shaped like cigars, and the heads, like the sharks', were so large they were almost a second body. The ends of their tails supported horizontal and vertical fin-rudders.
The wind took cloud and cloud-eaters out of his sight.
The sun descended, but so slowly that he feared this world would come to an end before its sun Now he was sweating, and his throat and lips were dry. The air seemed to lack moisture, though it was directly above the sea. And the shore was still so distant that he could not see it. He could only float or assist the natural drift with his hands. He began to paddle, but this increased his rate of sweating and, after a while, he was panting. He lay face-down with his chin on the edge of the coffin, and then he turned over. Another great red shape-shifting cloud was far overhead with its attendant leviathans of the atmosphere.
He began paddling again. After about fifteen minutes he saw land ahead, and this renewed his strength. But hours passed, with the sun seemingly determined to ride forever in the daytime sky. He slept again and when he awoke the west was definitely a coast with vegetation. Also, his lungs were turning to dust and his tongue to stone.
Despite his weakness, he began paddling again. If he did not get to the shore soon he would end up dead on top of the coffin instead of inside it, where he would properly belong.
The shoreline remained as far away as ever. Or so it seemed to him. Everything in this world, except for the creatures of the wind, crept painfully and maddeningly. Time itself, as he had thought once when on the Pequod, now held long breaths with keen suspense.
But even this world of the gigantic red sun could only delay time for so long. The last of the sea waves deposited the fore-end of the coffin upon the shore.
Ishmael slipped off the coffin onto his knees, up to his groin in the thick water, and felt himself rise and then subside with the swell of the sea-bottom. And, when he staggered onto the land and pulled the coffin-canoe the rest of the way out of the water, he felt the ground quake under him. The shimmying made him sick.
He closed his eyes while he picked up one end of the coffin and dragged it into the jungle.
After a while, knowing that the earth was not going to quit trembling and quit waxing and waning, he opened his eyes.
It took a long time to get used to the earth being a bowlful of jelly and to the palsied plants.
Creepers were everywhere on the ground and in the air. These varied in size from those as thick as his wrist to those large enough for him to have stood within if they had been hollow. Out of them sprang hard, fibrous, dark brown or pale red or light yellow stems. These sometimes grew up to twenty feet high. Some were bare poles, but out of the side of others grew horizontal branches and tremendous leaves big enough to be hammocks. They kept themselves from sagging by putting out at their free ends tendrils that snagged neighboring stems and then grew around and around them. In fact, every plant seemed to depend upon its neighbors for support.
There were also a variety of hairy pods, dark red, pale green, oyster white, and varying from the size of his fist to that of his head.
He could find no water, though he described a spiral through the jungle and then returned to the seaside. The ground under the creepers was as hard and dry as that of the Sahara Desert.
He studied the plants, wondering where they got their moisture, since they had no roots into the earth. After a while it occurred to him that the bare stems rising into the air might be the roots. These could gather whatever moisture was in the atmosphere. But where did the vegetation get its food?
While he was pondering that, he heard a chirruping sound. Then two pairs of long fuzzy ante