I have written on former occasions a description of St. Peter's Church at Rome, taken a running jump at the Pyramids, and once, just once, I wrote a rhapsody—about the Hawaiian Islands—most beautiful spot on earth. But I've always promised myself that I'd leave a sto-o-rm at sea alone.
But when an exacting public drives, a hack must needs travel, and if I must come through with a storm at sea, right here and now is the time and place to do it, as we are in the midst of a typhoon.
Word has come to me that some of my readers are disappointed that I shied at a description of sea sickness, but instead went off on a tangent about false teeth
Now a typhoon is conceded to be the most colossal kind of a storm, and right here in the China Sea, between Hong Kong and Manila, is the place where they grow the biggest typhoons—this is headquarters for typhoons—and we are now in the midst of the biggest of its kind. So while I have the data right at hand where I can pick it fresh from the hat—get all the local coloring—I'll do the regular and conventional thing, albeit under protest. Ah me! ah my! ah mo! ah me! I say, and then some more. I wish you might be with me now and hear the billows roar. A storm has struck this good old ship, the waves are mountain high, the billows rise, and rise, and rise, and mount up to the sky, while gullies in the vasty deep the valiant ship must try. Down, down she goes, and still down, down, into the depths of hell, and then she strives to rise again on ocean's mighty swell. She climbs, and climbs, and climbs, and climbs—almost she makes the top—the billow breaks—comes crashing down—the ship is in the sop. Ten thousand tons of briny sea come crashing on her deck; another blow like that I fear the gallant ship will wreck. Forked lightning splits the inky sky, with blinding flash on flash, while thunder-bolts shoot up the ship with awful deafening crash. Up through the billows, up she comes, she whoofs, and groans, and creaks—a mightier billow still in store the ship's destruction seeks. She rides the crest, then plunges down to greater depths below; the greedy sea laughs in its glee, then thunderous billows throw o'er bow and poop of fated sloop—they stab her through and through, they wash the captain overboard, likewise his mate and crew. The bos'n and the cook are gone, also the nine-lived cat—on all the ship no soul is spared, no, not one lonesome rat. The ship is lost! Where is the scribe—the boy, oh where is he? Astride the bowsprit, pen in hand, writing a sto-o-rm at sea.
MORAL: Genius should be coaxed, not driven.
