“They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble.
“They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.”
Presently the whole wild picture was again wrapped in gloom, and I was only conscious of the thunder of the waves beating over the ship, of the howling wind and dashing, blinding spray; a moment of gloom: then the clouds were dashed away by the wind, the sun burst out and the wild day shone round again.
We were in the Gulf Stream, which is of a warmer temperature than the other waters of the Atlantic in the same latitude; and the cooler wind seemed to grasp the water up and dash it into the sky; so that, at times, as the spray mounted up and formed in clouds, the sea and sky appeared to leave their places, rushing about through space and commingling in unutterable confusion.
In the midst of all this, how frail did our ship seem!—so frail, that I fancied it lived only because the battling elements did not deign to notice it, or think it worth their while to crush it, as they might have done with a breath!
But now, a beam of hope dawned on us; and it could be seen shining on the faces of all. Every countenance was radiant with it. There was, at last, after eight hours of constant pumping, a perceptible decrease of water in the hold. Sixty or seventy tons of cargo had been thrown from the after part of the ship; the carpenter had gone down and succeeded in patching up one of the rifts: and, to our joy, it was found that the pumps were now capable of throwing the water out a little faster than it ran in. Although the gale was still blowing, and many planks had been torn from the bulwarks by the waves, imminent death no longer threatened us, and we felt comparatively happy.
All that day, (Monday,) that night, and a portion of the following day, the storm raged. But on Tuesday afternoon it gradually lulled, and on Wednesday morning the sun smiled cheerfully on a nearly smooth sea. A slight breeze was blowing, the sky was clear and blue, the air perfectly charming; and I began to forget the terrors and dangers of the storm through which we had passed. After all, now, it was pleasant to be at sea.
Of course, such a thing as proceeding on a voyage of fifteen thousand miles was not to be thought of; and the captain put back for New York, which was now about seven hundred miles distant, as we had drifted a long way during the north-west gale.
That beautiful morning, as I went up on the after deck—a deck, usually called the poop deck, which surrounds the cabin, and is raised about three or four feet above the main deck—I met the captain walking to and fro, and he said:
“Well, Mr. Smith, taking into consideration our recent gale, what do you think of the man who wrote ‘A life on the ocean wave?’”