CHAPTER XIV
THE IMPORTANCE OF SHIPS
Since time immemorial man has sailed the sea, yet is the sea but little known. To most of us it is an enigma, even though we may often have viewed its undulating surface from the deck chairs of ocean liners. But the ocean is not to be learned by idling passengers in deck chairs. One must play a part—no matter what—in the struggle to master it before one may feel acquainted with it. Nor even then may one become familiar, nor trust it over much. Sometimes it rages loud and long, and finally, worn out with the strain of raging, goes into a sort of restless doze, with occasional reawakenings of anger. Sometimes it hides beneath a mask of fog—quiet but untrustworthy, motionless but sulky—giving out no warnings of its dangers, and stubbornly interfering with those that man sends out. But these are not the moods most natural to the sea.
Its moods are generally genial. Sometimes it lies for days, untroubled by its storms, unhidden by its fogs. All day its surface twinkles in the sunlight or all night rocks the bright reflection of the moon. It winks and smiles and whispers to the sides of every passing ship. Its sounds are sibilant and liquid. Or it may be playful, leaping joyously in great blue surges, through which the sunlight gleams. Now and then, perhaps, a wave may pop an inquisitive crest a little above the rail, and sprinkle sparkling drops of salty water over a sailor or a passenger, but one need only look down beside the ship and see the colour of the waves to know that therein lies only virile playfulness.
And these are the more usual of the moods of the sea. Now and then it turns gray with anger and flings itself about in fits of fuming rage. Now and then it glowers beneath the fog, ugly and menacing. But in that, as in its sunny gentleness and boisterous fun, it has only the attributes of many a child—quick to foolish anger, quick to sullen sulking, but just as quick to gentleness and fun, and much more given to them.
But the sea, unfortunately, is generally judged by its moments of petulance. It is generally the story dealing with storm or fog that finds its way into the papers. In that we react toward the sea just as we do toward our neighbours’ children. Weeks may pass during which they are guiltless of a single childish prank and we are likely not to think of them at all. But let them tie a tin can to our old dog’s tail or run our cat high up among the branches of a tree, and we are likely to be loud in criticism of them.
And so the sea. It periodically, so to speak, ties tin cans to the tails of even the biggest ships. It sometimes drives badly treated vessels into the protecting reaches of our harbours. But for every traveller who has seen a storm at sea there are a hundred who never saw one, albeit many of these latter, because the ship may have rolled a bit too much to suit their untrained stomachs, would swear that they had passed through storms of the very greatest magnitude.
But storms, by and large, are not so serious as landsmen sometimes think. This is proved by the numerous long ocean voyages that have been made—that are constantly being made, as a matter of fact—by small ships, by yachts, by tiny sailboats, even by open rowboats, all over the world, and often for pleasure.
In 1896 two young Americans left New York in a small light rowboat, without sails or engine, and sixty-two days later landed at Havre, France, having rowed the entire distance—aided, of course, by the Gulf Stream Drift and by the fact that the prevailing winds were from astern. Such a trip is foolhardy in the extreme and proves nothing except that there are people foolish enough to do even so nonsensical a thing.
THE SPRAY