The skipper paced the poop with uncertain steps, hardly able to conceal his impatience at the dallying of the light airs that only made the great squares of canvas slam sullenly against the masts, and wear themselves thin. Longingly his eyes lingered on the western horizon, hungering for sign of the “Westerlies.” His eager gaze was at last rewarded by the vision of a sombre arch of lowering cloud, which slowly upreared its grim segment above the setting sun. The fitful south-easterly airs, dregs of the “Trades,” which in their feeble variableness had so sorely tried his patience, gradually sank like the last few breaths of some expiring monster, leaving the sea glassy and restful under the dark violet of the evening sky. Only a long, regular swell came rolling eastward in rhythmical march, its placid undulations swaying the huge vessel gently as the drowsy rocking of an infant’s cradle. But its indications were sufficiently precise to satisfy the skipper, who, after a peaceful pipe, retired early to rest, leaving orders to call him in the event of any sudden change. His manner, however, indicated that he expected nothing of the kind. After his departure the chief officer prowled restlessly about the quarterdeck, being a man to whom the stagnation of a calm was an unmitigated calamity. At present his only satisfaction lay in noting how steadily the celestial bridge astern grew in breadth and altitude, while at the same time the swell became deeper, longer, and more definite in its direction.
By four bells the summits of the climbing cumuli forming the immeasurable arch in the west were right overhead, while the sky within its radius was now overspread with a filmy veil that hid the stars from view. Suddenly a chill breath touched his ear, sensitive as a hound’s, and immediately his fretful lassitude was gone. He stood erect, alert, every nerve tense, ready for action. “Stand by, the watch!” he roared, and in response a few dark figures slouched into sight from the shadowy corners where they had been dozing away the leaden-footed hours. Then a cool stream of air came steadily flowing from the mysterious centre of the gloom abaft. “Square the main-yard!” shouted the mate again; and with eerie, wailing cries the great steel tubes were trimmed to the coming breeze. The order was hardly executed before, with a rush and a scream, out leapt the west wind from its lair, while with many a sharp report and grinding of gear being drawn into its grooves the huge fabric obeyed the compelling impulse and began her three thousand league stretch to the eastward. By midnight it blew a gale, to which the same vessel, had she been bound in the opposite direction, must needs have shown but a scanty spread of sail. Now, nothing was further from the intention of the gleeful mate than the starting of a single thread.
At the relieving of the watch the skipper was called and informed of the change, so that upon him should rest the responsibility for “carrying on.” For the driving fragments of storm-rent cloud were low, and by their meteor speed foretold that this was but a foretaste of the tempest to follow. Planting himself in his favourite attitude on the extreme weather-quarter, the captain fixed his eyes on the upper sails with a look of supreme content, though to an inexperienced gaze they would have seemed on the point of bursting into shreds, their very stitch-holes strained to gaping a quarter-inch long. Every one of her thirty-four wings were spread and drawing, for the wind being well on the quarter, allowed of the yards being canted forward, while the ship went “steady as a church,” with a ten-degree list to port. Still the wind increased and faster drove the ship, until by daylight she was going a full sixteen knots, which, in spite of the Yankee yarns anent the James Baines, her main skysail, and her twenty-one knots, is about the maximum possible under sail. The first cheerless gleams of the new day revealed an awe-inspiring view. Far as could be seen the ocean surface was torn into snowy foam by the raging wind, for the sea had not yet time to get into the gigantic stride it would presently take in sympathy with the irresistible march of the all-compelling storm. “Fine breeze, sir,” chuckled the mate, rubbing his hands with delight. “Only hope it’ll hold,” replied the skipper, peering keenly aft into the eye of the wind. There, to a landsman, the sight was ominous, almost appalling. Dense masses of distorted nimbus came hurtling out of the deep gloom, which seemed to grow blacker and more menacing every hour. So through the howling day the big ship fled onward like a frightened thing, steady and straight as an ice-yacht over Lake Michigan, although at times an incipient sea smote her broadside, and, baffled, cast its crest aloft, where the shrieking blast caught it and whirled it in needle-like particles as high as the upper topsails.
When night drew in the sea had fairly risen, and came bellowing along in mountainous masses many miles in length at a speed that bade fair to overtake the fleeing ship. Strange it was to note how, as the waves grew, the ship seemed to dwindle until her huge bulk appeared quite insignificant. And now, at frequent intervals, enormous bodies of broken water hurled themselves on board, often filling the spacious decks flush fore and aft with a seething flood. And still the “old man,” hung on, his courage and faith in the powers of his ship being justly rewarded by a week’s run of over two thousand miles without the loss of a rope-yarn. Then the breeze gradually faltered, swerved from its steadfast direction, and worked round by the south, until at south-east it dropped lifeless for an hour or so. Then out from the north-east it rushed like a raving genie, almost catching the ship aback, and giving the scanty band of toilers a tremendous task to handle the immense squares of canvas that thundered like infuriate monsters against their restraining bonds. But in a short time the gale had veered round into the westward again, and the Coryphæna resumed her headlong race to the east. Running upon the arc of a great circle, she gradually worsened the weather as she reached higher latitudes. Stinging snow squalls came yelling after her, hiding everything behind a bitter veil. Past gigantic table-topped icebergs, floating mountains against whose gaunt sides the awful billows broke with deafening clangour, flinging their hissing fragments hundreds of feet into the gloomy sky. At last so fierce grew the following storm that the task of reducing sail became absolutely necessary. All hands were called and sped aloft to the unequal conflict. Scourged by the merciless blast, battered by the threshing sails, they strove for dear life through two terrible hours of that stern night. A feeble cry was heard,—a faint splash. Only a man dropped from the main top-gallant yard,—through one hundred and twenty feet of darkness into the yeasty smother beneath, and ere the news reached the deck, calm and peaceful below the tumult, more than a mile astern, swallowed by the ever-unsatisfied maw of the ravening sea. And onward like a meteor sped the flying ship, “running her Easting down.”
VII
IN THE CROW’S NEST
Swinging through the clear sky, one hundred feet above the little stretch of white deck that looks so strangely narrow and circumscribed, the period of two hours assigned for a spell is often spent in strange meditations. For all the circumstances are favourable to absolute detachment from ordinary affairs. A man feels there cut off from the world, a temporary visitor to a higher sphere, from whose serene altitude the petty environment of daily life appears separated by a vast gulf. Rising to that calm plane in the shimmering pearly twilight of a tropical dawn, he is enabled to view, as from no other standpoint, the daily mystery and miracle of the sunrise. For he forgets the tiny microcosm below, involuntarily looking upward into the infinite azure until his mind becomes consciously akin to eternal verities, and sheds for a brief space the gross hamperings of fleshly needs and longings. At such a time, especially if the heavens be one stainless concave of blue, the advent of the new day is so overwhelming in its glory that the soul is flooded with a sense of celestial beauty unutterable. Beautiful and glorious indeed are the changing tints and varying hues of early dawn upon the fleecy fields of cloud, but the very changeableness of the wondrous scene is unfavourable to the simple settlement of wondering, worshipping thought induced by the birth of unclouded light. At first there appears upon the eastern edge of the vast, sharply-defined circle of the horizon, that by a familiar optical illusion seems to bound a sapphire concavity of which the spectator is the centre, a tremulous, silky paling of the tender blue belonging to the tropical night. The glowing stars grow fainter, dimmer, ceasing to coruscate like celestial jewels studding the soft, dark canopy of the sky. Unlingering, the palpitating sheen spreads zenithwards, presently sending before it as heralds wide bars of radiance tinted with blends of colour not to be reproduced by the utmost skill of the painter. Before their triumphal advent the great cone of the zodiacal light, which, like a stupendous obelisk rising from the mere shadow of some ineffable central glow, to which the gigantic sun itself is but a pale star, has dominated the moonless hours, fades and vanishes. Far reaching, these heavenly messengers gild the western horizon, but when the eye returns to their source it has become “a sea of glass mingled with fire,”—a fire which consumes not, and, while glowing with unfathomable splendour, has yet a mildness that permits the eye to search its innermost glories unfalteringly and with inexpressible delight.
But while the satisfied sight dwells upon this transcendent scene, forgetting that it is not the only morning in earth’s history when it is to be lavished upon a favoured world, there is a sudden quickening of the throbbing light, along the sharp blue edge of the ocean runs a blazing rim of molten gold, and in a perfect silence, beneath which may be felt the majestic music of the spheres, the sun has come. Turn away the head; the trembling eyes cannot for an instant dwell upon that flaming fervent globe that at one mighty stride is already far above the horizon. The sweet face of the sea wears a million sparkling smiles of welcome—everywhere the advent of the Day-bringer has decked it with countless flashing gems. As if ecstatic in their appreciation of the banishment of night, a school of porpoises five thousand strong indulge in riotous gambols. Leaping high into the bright air, their shining, lithe bodies all a-quiver with pure joy of abundant life, they churn the kindly sea into foam, leaving in their mad, frolicsome rush a wide track of white on the smoothness behind them. So flawless is the calm that even the tiny argosy of the nautilus is tempted to rise and spread its silken sail, a lovely gauzy curve just a shade or so lighter in hue than the sapphire of the sea, and so discernible from that height to the practised eye. In quick succession more and more appear, until a fairy fleet of hundreds is sailing as if bearing Titania and her train to some enchanted isles, where never wind blows loudly. But lo! as if at a signal from a pigmy Admiral, the squadron has vanished bubble-wise. From where they lately rode in mimic pageant rises, ghost-like, a vast flock of flying-fish, the hum of whose vibrant wing-fins ascends to the ear. Many thousands in number, glistening in the sunblaze like burnished silver, they glide through the air with incredible speed, the whole shoal rising and falling in wave-like undulations as if in the performance of preconcerted evolutions. They have been flying upon a plane of perhaps twenty feet above the sea for some five hundred yards, and are just about to re-enter the water, when beneath them appear the iridescent beauties of a school of dolphin (not the dull-hued mammal, but the poet-beloved fish). At that dread sight the solid phalanx breaks up, hurled back upon itself in the disorder of deadly panic. In little groups, in single fugitives, they scatter to every point of the compass, a hopelessly disorganised mob, whereof the weaker fall to swift oblivion in the gaping jaws of their brilliant, vigorous foes beneath. The main body sheer off, sadly thinned, in a fresh direction, long quivering raiders launching themselves in hot pursuit upon their rear, devouring as they rush, until eaters and eaten disappear, and the battlefield lies in placid beauty as if never disturbed. One hovering bird, a “bo’sun,” with long slender tail and feathers of purest white, circles around on unmoving, outspread pinions, slowly turning his pretty head, with dark incurious eyes, upon the strange biped so awkwardly perched in his dominions of upper air. Whence and when did he come? A moment since and he was not. Did the vacant ether produce him? Yet another moment and he is gone as he came, leaving behind him a palpable sense of loss.
But now all attention is concentrated upon the horizon, where the trained eye has caught a glimpse of something of greater interest than either bird or fish. A series of tiny puffs, apparently of steam, rises from the shining surface, but so evanescent that nothing but long-practised vision would discern them at so great a distance. Irregularly, both as to time and position, they appear, a shadowy procession of faintest indefinite outlines, a band of brief shadows. Yet upon them eager eyes are bent in keenest attention, for they represent possibilities of substantial gain, and bring the mind back from the realms of pure romance with the swiftness of a diving sea-bird down to the hard necessities of everyday life. They are the breathings of marine mammalia, mightiest of ocean’s citizens, and strangest of links between the inhabitants of land and sea. A little keen scrutiny, however, reveals the disappointing fact that those feathery phantoms mark the presence of that special species of whales who enjoy complete immunity from attack either from above or below. Their marvellous agility, no less than the exiguous covering of fat to which they have reduced the usually massive blubber borne by their congeners, gives abundant reason why they should be thus unmolested. So they roam the teeming seas in the enviable, as well as almost unique, position among the marine fauna of exemption from death, except by sickness or old age, as much as any sedate, law-abiding citizen of London. They seem to be well aware of their privileges, for they draw near the ship with perfect confidence, heeding her huge shadow no more than if she were a mass of rock rising sheer from the ocean-bed, and incapable of harm to any of the sea-folk. From our lofty eyrie we watch with keenest interest the antics of these great creatures, their amatory gambols, parental care, elegant ease, and keen sportiveness. Yonder piebald monster, who seems the patriarch of the school, after basking placidly in the scorching rays of the sun, now high in the heavens, gravely turns a semi-somersault, elevating the rear half of his body (some forty feet or so) out of the water. Then with steady, tremendous strokes he beats the water, the hundred square feet of his tail falling flatly with a reverberation like the sound of a distant bombardment. The others leap out of water, sedately as becomes their bulk, or roll over and over each other upon the surface, occasionally settling down until they look like fish of a foot or so in length. They even dare to chafe their barnacle-studded sides against the vessel’s keel, sending a strange tremor through her from stem to stern, which is even felt in the “crow’s nest.” But no one molests them in any way; in fact, it must be placed to the whaler’s credit that he rarely takes life for “sport,” though callous as iron where profit of any kind may be secured.
Oh, the heat; as if one’s head were a focus for the sun himself, since there is little else for many leagues exposed for him to assail except the mirror-like ocean. Thence, too, the heat rises as if to place us between two fires, until we feel like the fakirs of India undergoing their self-imposed penance of the swing. How fervently thankful we are when at last the glorious orb descends so low that his slanting rays lose their power in great measure, and permit us again to take a reviving interest in our surroundings. Yon floating tree, for instance; we have long been wondering in a vague sort of dream what it might be. And indeed its appearance is strange enough to warrant considerable speculation. It has been adrift for months, and except upon the side which floats uppermost, is covered with barnacles, whose adhering feet have extended in some instances to a fathom in length, the tiny shells being almost invisible at the free ends. This wealth of living covering, waving gently as the log is rocked by the unseen swell, gives the whole thing an uncanny look, as of some strange unclassified monster “begotten of the elder slime.” Around it are playing in shoals fish of many kinds seen only in deep waters—fish of every luminous tint that can be imagined, and ranging in size from the lordly albacore, weighing a quarter of a ton, to the tiny caranx of a couple of inches long. But hush! there is a priceless freshness in the air. The weary day is shaking off the fervent embrace of her exhaustless bridegroom. Gentle, lovely shades of colour are replacing the intense glow. A little, little breeze creeps cautiously along, ruffling the grateful sea in patches of purple shadow. A more subdued glory gathers in the west than heralded the sun’s ascending—a tenderer range of tints, like the afterglow of autumn as compared with the flaming blossoms of spring. For a few brief moments the gorgeous golden disc swims upon the edge of the lambent sea, and he is gone. Swiftly following him, the brilliant hues fade from the sky, shyly the stars peep out, and it is night.