Porpoises

Porpoises are among the most striking animals encountered at sea aboard the Charlotta: they race and tumble beside the emigrant ship while it struggles against contrary winds. Seen by Robert and Elin from the rail, they sharpen the contrast between the ship’s constrained, delayed passage and the sea’s effortless movement, and give Robert another occasion to regard the ocean as a changing world rather than a desolate expanse.

The Encounter at Sea

Robert and Elin lean against the rail and watch the porpoises play alongside the ship. They seem fat and round, like suckling pigs, and tumble through the water like a mill wheel turning in its channel. They are the largest fish either young observer has ever seen. The encounter is also a practical reminder of the distance between the emigrants and the life they left behind: Robert has no fishing gear at hand, since his poles, lines, and hooks are packed in his America chest, stored below the main hold at the port of embarkation. He has not seen the chest since.

Speed and the Delayed Ship

The porpoises move faster than the Charlotta because the persistent westerly wind blows against the vessel. They swim and leap around its bow as though taunting the slow-moving ship, an impression that gives the scene a lively counterpoint to the passengers’ long wait for favorable weather. The animals are not held to the emigrants’ pace: the ship’s progress depends on wind and current, while the porpoises seem to play freely in the water beside it.

Robert’s Attention to the Ocean

The sight belongs to Robert’s growing habit of observing the sea rather than dismissing it as monotonous. Elin notices patches of green water and asks how they came to be there. Robert answers by imagining that God may have first made a few green lakes and later created the waters blue, leaving the green ones scattered in the sea. The exchange turns an unfamiliar feature of the ocean into a shared exercise in speculation; the porpoises provide its immediate setting, not a problem the narrative resolves.

Robert’s broader response to the sea has changed since the first storm. Early in the voyage, fear of drowning kept him awake in his bunk; now he can go to bed without fearing that the ship will sink during the night. He finds the ocean continually altered by weather and light, unlike the fixed hills on land. Against that changing expanse, the porpoises’ tumbling movement offers a particularly vivid instance of the life and motion he has learned to notice.