That is near enough for most landsmen to know. If, however, you ask why the winds blow towards the equator, I need only tell you that Nature abhors a vacuum. Well, along the great hot regions round the earth’s waist you have such a vacuum, because heated air always ascends, and winds rush in from both sides to fill it up.
The winds far south of the trades have often, in summer particularly, a northerly direction, because the ocean is here warmer than the ice. But these are very variable.
On the whole, perhaps, the study of the winds is best left to the meteorologist.
A single glance at a map of the Antarctic will show any one what a vast stretch of lonesome ocean there is betwixt Kerguelen and Tierra del Fuego, which is the lowest land of the great South American continent.
The wind to the Walrus, and to the Sea Elephant as well, would be ever welcome, unless it came in the somewhat questionable shape of a hurricane, because they must steam just as little as possible. The Elephant, it is true, had more than filled up at Mauritius. In fact, she had arrived at Kerguelen a bumper ship, with coals, coals everywhere, and these she had shared with the Walrus.
More than this, in the Sea Elephant’s passage back to Kerguelen, she would probably call at the Cape to coal up again—or somewhere else; and, indeed, in a voyage such as this, a good deal has to be left to what is termed blind chance, though be assured chance never is or was blind—every wind and every current of the ocean is but obeying inexorable laws in blowing or flowing whither it does.
* * * * *
Navigation, nowadays, is so strange and difficult a study to a mere outsider, or ’longshoreman, that although told that the Walrus was bearing up for the Crozet Islands, and although they could easily position these on the map or chart, and knew therefore that they lay to the nor’ard and west of Kerguelen, Charlie and Walt were considerably puzzled when they looked at the compass to see which way the ship’s head was.
“We seem to be going a bit zigzag, don’t we, Charlie, old man?” said Walt to his companion one fine forenoon.
“I thought so too, Walt; but I suppose we’ll get there all the same. Come along. Don’t puzzle your head; the dogs want a scamper, and luckily we’re off duty.”