We soon commenced to feel contented in our isolated moving habitation, with its strong canvas buoying us up in the breeze, like a huge bird of passage in its aërial flight, and we looked out on the “waste of waters” as only an untried experiment, about which very fearful things had been said, but not so bad after all. While we were watching for new wonders, the sun sunk into the sea, and the stars came out one by one from their canopied homes in the blue sky, the larger, brighter ones rising first, like the stronger spirits in life, which leave their beds with the dawn, to make preparation for the feebler little footsteps that now open their eyes
timidly on the great world into whose magnitude and mysteries they are just entering. The monotony of a sea-voyage is always broken by the daily revolutions of the earth on its axis, if not more stirring events. Our second morning at sea the winds and waves were hushed quietly as the calm which pervades a sinner’s sensibilities when the angel of peace first speaks comfort to his sin-burdened soul. Our sails hang loosely as a gambler’s conscience, while the surge swings us around freely without taking us forward. The spars squeak, twist, and groan, as though in distress at our condition. The sailors are busy tying up ropes, mending sails, and climbing about in the rigging like cats. A kind of sea-polyp, Physalia utriculus, or Portuguese men-of-war, which move passively on the surface of the water, have been in sight all day, with their bubble sails of rainbow hue, supported by emerald hulls, with their anchors steadying them in their swift, uncertain voyage over the sea. How fragile and ethereal they look! These little creatures only trim their sails in fine weather, but when the wind blows they descend into more quiet quarters. The sailors look with suspicion upon their movements, as they say their appearance indicates foul weather. They present a concave surface above the water of three or four inches that is guided by purple rudder-bands, which descend about two feet into the sea. These filaments are very poisonous when handled—the sailors, while in bathing, being sometimes stung by them, which is accompanied with a very painful burning sensation, like the nettle. They may be classed among the many other curious and wonderful beings that inhabit the great deep, of which we know but little or nothing.
The old tars have been singing to-day,
Mackerel skies and mares’ tails
Make lofty ships take in their sails.
Last night, as we were retiring, the sky was banking up black clouds, which indicates a nor’-wester. Now, when we look across the crested surface of the deep, dark sea, our thoughts are too sacred for bosom-confidants, and too serious to bear much sounding by ourselves, being shadowed by forebodings, not unmixed with melancholy, when we think on the fate of many who have sailed before us. Our rough old captain, who commences his day’s duties before sunrise by giving the steward a cursing for what he has done or left undone, as a kind of recreation when he is drinking his coffee, has been giving his oracle, the barometer, some mysterious looks all day.
The sun has gone to her home in the west, and we now feel that a night of darkness—it may be destruction—has drawn her deepest shadows over us. The wind is blowing a gale, above which is heard at the wheel aft the same cross old captain screaming his orders through the storm-trumpet, which sound dismal as death: “Lower the foresail!” “Take down the topsails!” “Put out a watch!” “Let her drive before the wind!” Old Neptune has commenced his fearful frolics in earnest, rolling the white caps in every direction. The vessel has commenced plunging through a trackless pathway, while the sea boils like a pot.
And whistling o’er the bending mast,
Loud sings the fresh’ning blast.