But there are times when even a sailor may feel weary on the ocean. My experience leads me to believe that so long as a ship is positively doing something, and going somewhere in particular, Jack-a-tar is perfectly contented and happy. In such a case—a sailing ship on a long voyage, for example—if the wind blows dead ahead, dead in the good chip’s eye, Jack may feel thrown back a bit in his reckoning, but he eats and sleeps and doesn’t say much, he has got to work to windward, and this brings out all the craft’s good sailing capacity. If it blows a gale in a wrong direction—well, she is laid to, and however rough the weather be, Jack comforts himself and his mates with the assurance that it can’t go on blowing in the same direction for ever. Neither it does; and no sooner is the vessel lying her course again, with her stem cleaving through the blue water, than Jack begins to sing, like a blackbird just let loose from a pie.
If the ship gets caught in a tornado, then there is so much to do that there is really no time for grumbling.
But what Jack can not stand, with anything like equanimity, is inaction. Being in the doldrums, for instance, on or about the line.
“As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.”
In such a case Jack does growl, and, in my humble opinion, no one has a better right to do so.
The day after that joyful evening described in last chapter, when, by this time, the men had not only read their letters o’er and o’er, but had almost got them by heart, as the long row of white palatial-looking buildings that forms the frontage of that strange city, Zanzibar, was left behind, and the greenery of trees was presently lost to view, the men’s spirits grew buoyant indeed. For fires were now ordered to be banked, as a breeze sprang up—quickly, too, as breezes are wont to in these latitudes.
Sail was set, pretty close hauled she had to be, but away went the Bunting nevertheless, cutting through the bright sparkling water like a knife. It was a wind to make the heart of a true sailor jump for joy. It cut the pyramidal heads of the waves off, and the spray so formed glittered in the sunshine like showers of molten silver; it sang rather than roared through the rigging, it kept the vane extended like a railway signal arm, it kept the pennant in a constant state of flutter, it kept the sails all full and free from wrinkle, and every sheet as taut as a fiddle-string. It was a “ripping” breeze, a happy bracing breeze, a breeze that gave one strength of nerve and muscle, and light and joy of mind.
The officers were all on deck, from the captain to the clerk, walking rapidly up and down as if doing a record or winning a bet.
The breeze continued for days till, indeed, the ship was degrees north of the line.
But one lovely night, with a clear sky and the moon shimmering on the wave crests, and dyeing the water with streaks like molten gold, it fell calm. The wind went away as suddenly almost as it had sprung up.