The sea has dangers peculiarly its own, and likewise charms possessed by nothing else in nature. Every one may have heard of the little earnest woman who at her first sight of the ocean sighed: “Ah—at last here is something there is enough of!” The sailor knows the ocean’s every mood, and may sing with Barry Cornwall:
“HE SINKS INTO THY DEPTHS, WITH BUBBLING GROAN,
WITHOUT A GRAVE, UNKNELLED, UNCOFFINED, AND UNKNOWN.”
“I love, oh, how I love to ride,
On the fierce, foaming, bursting
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the sou’west blasts do blow!”
Or if his mind be better adapted for homelier ditties, he may hum:
“The wind it blew a hurricane, the sea was mountains rollin’,
When Barney Buntlin’ turned his quid, and said to Billy Bowlin’:
‘A strong sou’wester’s blowin’, Billy; don’t you hear it roar now?
How I pity all unhappy folks as lives upon the shore now!’ ”