The monsoon winds of the Indian seas are most important and unique in their seasonal changing. For six months of the year the wind in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea will be north-easterly and the weather fine. Over the land, however, this fine wind is bearing no moisture, and its longer persistence than usual means famine with all its attendant horrors. “Fine weather” grows to be a term of awful dread, and men’s eyes turn ever imploringly to the south-west, hoping, with an intensity of eagerness that is only felt where life is at stake, for the darkening of those skies of steely blue, until one day a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand arises from the sharply defined horizon. Swiftly it expands into ominous-looking masses, but the omens are of blessing, of relief from drought and death. The howling wind hurls before it those leaden water-bearers until, one by one, they burst over the iron-bound earth, and from station to station throughout the length and breadth of Hindostan is flashed the glad message, “The monsoon has burst.” Out at sea the great steamships emerging from the Gulf of Aden are met by the turbulent south-wester, and have need of all their power to stem its force, force which is quite equal to that of a severe Atlantic gale at times. And all sailors dread the season, bringing as it does to their sorely tried bodies the maximum of physical discomfort possible at sea in warm climates.
Of the varying forces of winds, from the zephyr to the hurricane, it would be easy to write another page, but this subject is not strictly within the scope of the present article, and must therefore be left untouched.
THE SEA IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Remembering gratefully, as all students should do, the immense literary value of the Bible, it is not without a pang of regret that we are obliged to confess that its pages are so meagre of allusions to the grandest of all the Almighty’s works—the encircling sea. Of course we cannot be surprised at this, seeing how scanty was the acquaintance with the sea enjoyed by ancient civilised peoples, to whom that exaggerated lake, the Mediterranean, was the “Great Sea,” and for whom the River Oceanus was the margin of a boundless outer darkness. Yet in spite of this drawback, Old Testament allusions to the sea then known, few as they are, remain unsurpassable in literature, needing not to withdraw their claims to pre-eminence before such gems as “Ocean’s many-dimpled smile” or the “Wine-dark main” of the pagan poets. In number, too, though sparsely sprinkled, they far surpass those of the New Testament, which, were it not for one splendid exception, might almost be neglected as non-existent.
Our Lord’s connection with the sea and its toilers was confined to those petty Syrian lakes which to-day excite the traveller’s wonder as he recalls the historical accounts of hundreds of Roman galleys floating thereupon; and all his childish dreams of the great sea upon which the Lord was sailing and sleeping when that memorable storm arose which He stilled with a word suffer much by being brought face to face with the realities of little lake and tiny boat. St. John and St. James show by their almost terror-stricken words about the sea what they felt, and from want of a due consideration of proportion their allusions have been much misunderstood. No man who knew the sea could have written as one of the blissful conditions of the renewed heaven and earth that there should “be no more sea,” any more than he could have spoken of the limpid ocean wave as casting up “mire and dirt.”
But by one incomparable piece of writing Paul, the Apostle born out of due time, has rescued the New Testament from this reproach of neglect, and at the same time has placed himself easily in the front rank of those who have essayed to depict the awful majesty of wind and wave as well as the feebleness, allied to almost presumptuous daring, of those who do business in great waters. Wonder and admiration must also be greatly heightened if we do but remember the circumstances under which this description was written. The writer had, by the sheer force of his eloquence, by his daring to await the precise moment in which to assert his citizenship, escaped what might at any moment have become martyrdom. Weary with a terrible journey, faint from many privations, he was hurried on board a ship of Adramyttium bound to the coast of Asia (places not specified). What sort of accommodation and treatment awaited him there under even the most favourable circumstances we know very well. For on the East African coast even to this day we find precisely the same kind of vessels, the same primitive ideas of navigation, the same absence of even the most elementary notions of comfort, the same touching faith in its being always fine weather as evinced by the absence of any precautions against a storm.
Such a vessel as this carried one huge sail bent to a yard resembling a gigantic fishing-rod whose butt when the sail was set came nearly down to the deck, while the tapering end soared many feet above the masthead. As it was the work of all hands to hoist it, and the operation took a long time, when once it was hoisted it was kept so if possible, and the nimble sailors with their almost prehensile toes climbed up the scanty rigging, and clinging to the yard gave the sail a bungling furl. The hull was just that of an exaggerated boat, sometimes undecked altogether, and sometimes covered in with loose planks, excepting a hut-like erection aft which was of a little more permanent character. Large oars were used in weather that admitted of this mode of propulsion, and the anchors were usually made of heavy forked pieces of wood, whereto big stones were lashed. There was a rudder, but no compass, so that the crossing of even so narrow a piece of water as separated Syria from Cyprus was quite a hazardous voyage. Tacking was unknown or almost so, and once the mariners got hold of the land they were so reluctant to lose sight of it that they heeded not how much time the voyage took or what distances they travelled.
The nameless ship of Adramyttium then at last ventured from Sidon and fetched Cyprus, sailing under its lee. How salt that word tastes, and what visions it opens up of these infant navigators creeping cautiously from point to point along that rugged coast, heeding not at all the unnecessary distance so long as they were sheltered from the stormy autumn weather. Another perilous voyage across “the sea which is off Cilicia and Pamphylia” (another purely maritime term) and the harbour of Myra was gained. Great were the rejoicings of the voyagers, but premature, for every day that passed brought them nearer to the time of tempest, and consequently of utmost danger. In fact the memorable voyage of St. Paul may be said to begin here. The crossing of the Great Sea had been accomplished without incident, although doubtless occupying so many days that the landsmen were by this time somewhat accustomed to the misery of life at sea in those days, when in coarse weather sea-sickness was one of the least of their woes.