And the rain poured down from one black cloud,
The moon was at its edge.
The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
The moon was at its side;
Like water shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide."
Coleridge.
Wild weather on land! wild weather at sea! fear and trembling, and earnest prayers, in many a quiet home, for loved ones at sea, who must be within reach of the gale that hurries so fiercely by.
How impressive it is to lie awake listening to the storm—to hear the rush of the wind, now moaning in the chimney, now thundering at the windows against which the rain beats and hurtles; to fancy or to feel that the house trembles shaken in the rude power of the blast, or, if near the sea-shore, to hear the waves breaking on the beach, a half-suppressed tumultuous uproar, like the faintly heard riot of a distant angry mob. To get farther to sea in one's thoughts, and to picture a noble ship with close-reefed topsails running before the gale, or beating away from the dread neighbourhood of dangerous sands or coast, while the pilot, anxious and watchful, and the crew, eager and alert, peer through the darkness to catch the welcome guidance of some bright warning light, or are on the watch to detect the fainter light of some ship that is steering her course perilously near; the passengers all the time wistful and anxious, asking many questions, and receiving cheering answers, but given with that unreality of tone that makes the hearer fear the sound, more than he can believe the sense; or to imagine a vessel at anchor, the cables swinging out at their full length, the sails all closely furled, but the gale beating against the hull, and masts, and yards, with a power that threatens to sweep the ship and her living freight to a speedy destruction; to picture the ship lifting, and pitching, and surging, in a cloud of spray, the hungry waves leaping at it, as if to devour it before its time, the anchors yielding foot by foot, or the cable giving, and the hungry sands waiting in a terrible rage of foam and sea under the lee.