"Jonah felt the warmth of the late afternoon sun against his face, the deck trembling through his boots. The thin line of the horizon stretched out and out, to a distance unlimited, with the sea's deep blue shifting from dark to light, and then at the horizon's edge to the same blue as the sky. It was impossible to tell where sea ended and sky began. The water's surface had not a wave or a swell, but just a flat, slightly rippled glassy membrane with an occasional color change where some solitary current or ship's wake had moved through long ago..."