The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 1

BRITISH CROSSES AND MEDALS.—(Coloured Frontispiece.)
BY F. WHYMPER, AUTHOR OF “TRAVELS IN ALASKA,” ETC.
One can hardly gaze upon the great ocean without feelings akin to awe and reverence. Whether viewed from some promontory where the eye seeks in vain another resting-place, or when sailing over the deep, one looks around on the unbounded expanse of waters, the sea must always give rise to ideas of infinite space and indefinable mystery hardly paralleled by anything of the earth itself. Beneficent in its calmer aspect, when the silvery moon lights up the ripples and the good ship scuds along before a favouring breeze; terrible in its might, when its merciless breakers dash upon some rock-girt coast, carrying the gallant bark to destruction, or when, rising mountains high, the spars quiver and snap before the tempest’s power, it is always grand, sublime, irresistible. The great highway of commerce and source of boundless supplies, it is, notwithstanding its terrors, infinitely more man’s friend than his enemy. In how great a variety of aspects may it not be viewed!
“ ‘Let there be firmament
Amid the waters, and let it divide
The waters from the waters.’ ...
So He the world
Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide
Crystalline ocean.”
“Dreadful and tumultuous home
Of dangers, at eternal war with man,
Wide opening and loud roaring still for more,”