One might imagine that in the centre of a wild cyclone a ship could find safety, because there calm reigns. But the furious whirl of winds all around raises tumultuous billows; and towards the centre, although the winds themselves die down, the state of the sea is a perfect “chaos” of tempestuous waves converging from all sides. Sailors strive their utmost to avoid that central chaos.
CHAPTER VIII.
AN OCEAN OF AZURE
“The boom of the waves on the shingle.”
Lewis Morris.
“Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue Ocean, roll!”
Byron.
NOT that the Ocean is always and everywhere blue. In a certain “arm of the sea,” the Bristol Channel, it is commonly any tint that you please rather than blue—brown, green, yellow, chocolate, only not the colour that we love. If by chance it dons for a few hours a robe of azure, that robe is merely a passing loan from the sky. And in dull weather it can only be described as a huge puddle of muddy liquid.
People often grow to like best that to which they are accustomed. A lady, who had spent most of her life on the borders of that brown Channel, once assured me that she infinitely preferred it to the “deep blue sea.” She had been to stay by the latter, and had found its monotony of tint so uninteresting that she was charmed to get back to her old friend.
Tastes differ, certainly. Not many would agree with her. Yet it is a fact that the great Turner went to the Bristol Channel, with all its mud, for many of his marvellous sea and cloud effects.
“Deeply, darkly, beautifully blue,” sang Byron of the ocean, and he sang truly, even though the ocean itself, putting aside the Bristol Channel, is not always and uniformly azure. Near land the tint is often greenish. Sometimes it is pure green. Often it is a pale and watery blue. At other times we have a leaden grey. The genuine ocean-blue, which resembles nothing else on Earth, can seldom be enjoyed till one gets on really deep water, far from land. Or—till one is looking at the Mediterranean.