WATCHING THE WAVES.
We spent the afternoon on deck watching the waves, they being fairly entitled to the designation of billows. The sea was white with foam, though the day was fine; while round about the ship the eddying water presented numberless forms of beauty. These words by one of the poets are sometimes as true of sea water as of fresh:
“How beautiful the water is!
To me ’tis wondrous fair;
No spot can ever lonely be
If water sparkle there.
It hath a thousand tongues of mirth,
Of grandeur or delight,
And every heart is gladder made
When water greets the sight.”
Every now and then an enormous wave would break astern or about midship, like a mad pursuer compelled suddenly to give up the chase and die with a roar which seemed to tell what it would have been glad to do. It was Saturday afternoon, the time devoted by us at home to driving into the country; but the larger part of the afternoon went by unheeded while we were watching these frantic waters spending themselves one after another in their harmless wrath. There is more of pleasurable excitement in such a contemplation in a ship under sail than in driving; the sea air in fine weather giving exhilaration to the system which is in some degree a substitute for exercise. The ceaseless play of the water, never repeating itself in the same shape, interests the mind without fatigue, keeps attention awake by new surprises. We were at the mouth of the River La Plata, or “the River Plate,” as it is familiarly called, between Uragua and Paraguay, a region for disagreeable weather. Squalls, thunder and lightning, rain, everything which can make sea faring people uneasy, abound. But though we are nearly opposite the mouth of the river we are enjoying a perfect day. Still we are notified that we are in a region where we must not be surprised at sudden changes. Since a week after leaving New York we have been in exhilarating weather. All through November the thermometer has been at 60 or 70 in the cabin. On deck it has been cool enough, in the shade of a sail or under an awning. It was only the night before last that I felt the need of more than a sheet for a covering, though it was the fifth of December. The mere thought of sitting on a doorstep or piazza at home at this season to watch the stars, brought forcibly to mind the contrast of our respective climates. Home is 43 degrees north of the equator; we are now, Dec. 20th, thirty-seven degrees south of it; hence we are 43 + 37 = 80 degrees from home; and sixty miles being a degree we are 80 × 60 = 4800 miles from home, not reckoning the difference in our longitude.
We went to sleep with everything favoring the expectation of a peaceful night, but at midnight the tramp of feet on deck revealed that all hands had been summoned to take in sail. The noise made by the heavy boots of thirty men was not unlike the noise made by horses on being removed from a burning stable. The scene on deck that night must have been a good specimen of “River Plate weather,” judging from the description given of it by the officers. The captain said in a letter which he sent home:—
“At eleven o’clock a bank of clouds rose in the northern horizon with occasional flashes of lightning. As the clouds crept toward the zenith the flashes grew more frequent until they became incessant, playing over the whole of the north western sky accompanied by constant growls of thunder. Thinking a heavy squall was near I took in the royal and top gallant sails, hauled the courses up snug, had the topsail halyards and braces all laid down clear and kept the men standing by. When the clouds reached the zenith sharp flashes of lightning came at short intervals in addition to the constant display of heat lightning which had spread over the whole sky, keeping it in a perpetual blaze which I can compare only to a universal Aurora Borealis. Then it began to thunder in terrific peals with a continuous growl in the way of a running sub bass. I ordered all the cabin shutters to be closed tight that the flashes might not startle the sleepers, for it seemed as though the most brilliant day were alternating moment after moment with the blackest night. Then it began to rain. To use a sailor’s expression, “every drop was a bucketfull.” In the most literal sense, it poured. Every flash seemed the reopening of the sky, while the thunder had a combined sound of rattling and roaring, each of these noises vieing with the other, making me feel as though parks of artillery were crashing the reservoirs, bringing down their contents by floods. Withal, there was the phenomenon which landsmen are slow to believe, balls of fire resting on the trucks and yard arms, and called by sailors, “corpasants,” (a corruption of “corpus sancti”) these electric fires appearing to envelope the ship, availing themselves of all its points. All this was a combination of sights and sounds characteristic of the River Plate region. I thought every moment that a hurricane squall would burst upon us. It did blow hard. The wind changed entirely round the compass by spells, catching us aback two or three times, compelling us to brace the yards round, but the gale did not amount to anything serious. In a couple of hours the storm subsided. While it lasted it was appalling. All the powers of the air seemed to be in requisition to work some disaster.”
Some days later upon going on deck in the morning, the scene was a picture of desolation. A heavy gale was blowing and several sails had been stripped off by the winds. The mast and spars made me think of the nut trees in the country after a gale when the leaves are gone; the spars were hardly clothed with canvas enough to keep the ship on her way, the few sails which remained being furled, to save them; only some of the canvas about the bowsprit and foremast being spread, with the mizzen staysail, to prevent the ship from broaching to. Eighteen men were aloft securing the sails, the ship going only two or three knots. Some of the torn sails had been sent down on deck. I never desired more the skill of a draftsman that I might picture the appearance of some of the sails as they came down after the gale had spent its ingenuity in riddling them. The shapes of the rents could not have been contrived by human skill; the canvas was not merely torn, it was picked in pieces, mocking any attempt to bring it together and even to divine how its parts were ever related to each other. The way in which the sail cloth was dishevelled by the gale, laid out in shreds, every thread loosened from its neighbor, some parts of the sail mangled, other parts minced as no art of human fingers or mechanical skill could rival, made the sailors despair of any attempt to do mending in the premises. They wound large parts of a topsail together for scouring-rags, some of it for cleaning brass work and other uses, for which the riddling wind had made the duck surprisingly soft like flannel, and some of it like lint.
It seems fearful to lie so far removed from the habitable parts of the globe, a little company of human beings without neighbors, and with no means of help should we need it. Yet there are birds flying around us; some of them are resting on these waves. This inspires us with a feeling of safety. The sight of life in these creatures seems to be a connecting link between us and the living God. “From the ends of the earth,” literally, we cry to God when our hearts are overwhelmed by a sense of solitude. I am writing in a large easy chair, in which it requires some effort to preserve an upright position. The chair is made fast with rope yarns tying it to staples driven in to the floor; but for these I should go over. My inkstand is lashed with seizings to the swinging rest in front of me, diverting my attention from writing to the ink in the glass which at every roll of the ship climbs so nearly to an angle of forty-five degrees as to excite apprehension that it will spill. Ink is at best a source of mischief to all of us under the wisest precautions. What should I do just now should mine run over the floor? The stream would look as capricious as the wanderings of the children of Israel in the wilderness look on the map. I could not run for help, nor even stand, to call; I will put the cork in after dipping the pen when we are midway between a lee and weather roll. The girls are sewing as composedly as at home, one of them reading aloud from Dickens’ Mutual Friend. When I raise my eyes from my papers and look out of the window and see the water racing by us, white with foam, I need only the jingling of bells to make me fancy that I am in a sleigh. The man at the wheel keeps his post in his oil-cloth coat; I hear the pelting rain when the door is opened by the captain going up to ask “how she heads;” the gale is strengthening; we are nearing Cape Horn.