And yet, after a few hours of the turmoil and excitement, this state of things became quite as it were natural, so soon does one get accustomed to any circumstances, however strange at first. I even cooked hot tea; it was something to do, as well as to drink, and singing and whistling also beguiled the dark hours of eager, strained matching. In a lighter moment, once a great lumbering sloop sailed near, and we hailed her loudly, “How’s the wind going to be?”—for the wind kept ever changing (but the thunder and lightning were going on still). A gruff voice answered, “Can’t say; who can say—night—this sort—think it’ll settle east.” This was bad news for me, but it did not come true. The sloop’s skipper wished for an east wind, and so he expected it.
A stranger sound than any before now forced attention as it rapidly neared us, and soon the sea was white around with boiling, babbling little waves—what could it be? Instantly I sounded with the lead, but there was no bottom—we were not driving on shore—it was one of the “overfalls” or “ripples” we have mentioned before where a turbid sea is raised in deep water by some far-down precipice under the waves.
The important question at once arose as to which of the “overfalls” on my chart this could be—the one marked as only a mile from Beachy Head, or the other ten miles further on. Have we been turning and wheeling about all this dreary night in only a few square miles of sea, or have we attained the eastern tide, and so are now running fast on our course?
The incessant and irksome pitching and rolling which the overfalls caused, might be patiently borne, if only we could be assured that the yawl progressed. But all was still left in doubt.
So sped the storm for eight long hours, with splendours for the eye, and dark long thrills of the sublime, that stirred deep the whole inner being with feelings vivid and strong, and loosed the most secret folds of consciousness with thoughts I had never felt before, and perhaps shall never know again. The mind conjured up the most telling scenes it had known of “alone” and of “thunder,” to compare with this where both were now combined.
To stand on the top of Mont Blanc, that round white icicle highest in Europe, and all alone to gaze on a hundred peaks around—that was indeed impressive.
More so was it to kneel alone at the edge of Etna, and to fill the mind from the smoking water with thoughts and fancies teeming out of the hot, black, and wide abyss.
Thunder and lightning, also, in the crater of Vesuvius we had wondered at before; and it had been grander still, when the flashes lighted up Niagara pouring out its foam that glistened for a moment dazzling white and then vanished, while the thundering heavens sounded louder than the heavy torrent tumbling into the dark. But here, in my yawl on the sea, was more splendid than these. Imagination painted its own free picture on a black and boundless background of mind strung tight by near danger; and from out this spoke the deep loud diapason, while the quick flashing at intervals gave point to all. Then that glorious anthem came to my memory, where these words of the 18th Psalm are nobly rendered:—
“He bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness was under His feet.
“He rode upon a cherub and did fly; yea, He did fly upon the wings of the wind.
“He made darkness His secret place; the pavilion round about Him was dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.
“The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave His voice: hailstones and coals of fire.
“Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered: at Thy rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of Thy nostrils.
“He sent down from above, He took me, He drew me up out of many waters.”