Round the Wonderful World

by G. E. Mitton

There goes the bugle for lunch.

Seems early, you say? As if we had only just finished breakfast? Yes. Look at your watch. It is hopelessly wrong, of course; so is mine and everyone else's. We are going just about due east now, so we are meeting the sun half-way, so to speak. That is what makes the time different. You know that when the sun is at the highest point overhead at any place then it is midday, and as the earth spins round from west to east a constant succession of places come beneath him in turn, each getting their midday a little later than the one before. In the British Isles there is really very little difference between the hours when the eastern and western coasts meet the sun. Take Yarmouth, say, and Land's End; there is perhaps something like half an hour between them, but as it would be awkward for railway work and business if every place had a little different time, so, for convenience' sake, one "standard" time is adopted in England, Scotland, and now even in some of the nearest continental countries; this is the hour when the sun is highest above Greenwich, where is our greatest observatory. And this is called midday, even though as a matter of fact the real midday at different places may be earlier or later.

As we journey east across the world, however, we are constantly going forward to meet the sun. We are not only on the earth, which is turning round all the time, but we are going ahead ourselves as well, and out-running the earth, and so we arrive at noon sooner and sooner each day. Our watches of course take no heed of real time as judged by the sun, they are just mechanical and tick away their sixty minutes to each hour whether the sun is overhead or not. At this moment we are about four hours ahead of our friends in England. It is one o'clock here, but they will only be having breakfast! When we live always in one place it is easy to forget that we are on a ball spinning round in space, but this brings it home to us and makes us realise our absurd position in the universe. Well, let us get our lunch. There is one thing on board, everybody is always ready to eat an amazing amount after they have got over sea-sickness, and the number of meals we manage to consume here would surprise us at home!

As the evening closes in, the day undergoes a change; there is a thick bank of black-looking cloud in the west, and just as the sun goes down this breaks up into wild streamers and shows deep ragged gulfs of livid light between; there are glimpses of green and tawny-red and angry orange flashing through, and then the veil of cloud blots out the light. Yet it is still, there doesn't seem to be a ripple of wind, and the sea has a curious oily calm upon it. Would you like to come along to the bows after dinner? Don't, if you don't want to. It is more difficult to get there than we expected, for though it looks so calm there is a big swell, and we are rising and falling considerably on the smooth-backed hillocks of water. Creep under these ropes and over this barricade. Then we are free from all the entanglements. There are no dolphins now, but there is a strange light dancing away like fire from the cutting bow; it comes in streaks and flashes, one moment it seems as if it must be only a reflection in the cut water, and the next one could swear there was a real flash.

That is phosphorescence, which is very common in tropical seas, sometimes the whole sea is alight with it. Look at that! It is a vivid light like a wave of green fire, most beautiful! It is only, however, where the ship strikes the water that we see it to-night. But sometimes, though not often at this season of the year, the whole ocean seems to be alight with it; it is the effect of innumerable millions of tiny sea-creatures floating on the surface, though exactly why they do it at one time more than another is yet unknown. The curious thing is that there are so many different kinds of phosphorescence; there is the bright fiery kind like this we are seeing now in flashes, and there is a dull luminous kind which sailors call a "white sea." Then the whole sea appears as white as milk, or, as someone who has seen it describes it, as if it were changed to ice covered with a coating of snow. This was on a dark night before the moon had risen, but when she did get up it all disappeared and the sea looked much as usual, glittering only where the beams struck it, except for odd patches of shiny light here and there, and oddly enough exactly the same thing happened the following night. I'm afraid we shan't be lucky enough to see that.

Is the motion making you uncomfortable? No? I'm glad of that; you're a first-rate sailor. Let us go back to that jolly alcove at the end of the smoking-room looking aft, where we can see the great green-black waves rising suddenly behind us.

Yes, this is distinctly comfortable and quite interesting. It seems as if every wave rose in a great hill suddenly just after we had passed the spot! We must have come over it, but sitting like this we didn't feel it, we are riding so smoothly.

If we look out ahead we shall see the same sort of thing happening; we approach a black hillock of water, and just as we get to it it rolls down and disappears under us. The ship is so large that though she climbs those hills, we get the impression that the hills straighten underneath her. You must have noticed something of the same kind in riding a bicycle; if you are running down one hill and see another rising in front, the other one looks terrifically steep, but as you get on to it, it flattens out in an inexplicable way; it is the change in our own position that accounts for the phenomenon.

It is very close to-night and there is an uneasy feeling in the air; the captain did not appear at dinner. It is a good thing that they put off that fancy-dress ball which was to have been held this evening, for there could not have been much dancing. Your costume will come in useful another time. I want to see you sometime as a little Egyptian with a skull-cap and a garment like a flannel night-shirt! But we shall have another chance.

"Hope we're not in for a cyclone," says one of the men, appearing out of the smoking-room with a pipe in his mouth.