LOSING ONE’S SHADOW.
For about a week we have been directly under the sun. When we came under lat. 21° S. we could see nothing of our shadows at noon. Had we been ignorant of the cause we might have been in a frame of mind predisposing us to listen to German stories of a man’s selling his shadow to the evil one: for what had become of ours? Had we been of those ‘whose souls proud science never taught to stray far as the solar walk or milky way,’ we imagined what our speculations on this phenomenon would have been. One’s shadow certainly can never be less than in 21° S. Under our feet there was to each of us something like one of the clouds of Magellan.
THE CLOUDS OF MAGELLAN.
These we saw in the evening in the south-east, half way up to the zenith. They are two dark spots, one larger than the other, about twenty paces apart, not far from two yards broad. No stars appear in them. The telescope shows them to be openings into a milky way or paths of star dust, groups of heavenly bodies so many and so distant that their light is confused. Hence these openings in the bright heavens have the appearance of clouds, though they are not clouds; but the light which is in them is darkness, its excess confusing the irradiation.
SALT WATER BATHS.
You can have sea water brought to your room for sponge baths, or there is easy access to a room in the ship fitted up with all the conveniences for bathing. The men pour water through a hole on deck into a reservoir over head; pure sea water; the quantity making you remember the saying of Horace, ‘Dulce est detrahere acervo’,—It is pleasant to draw from a heap. In the Gulf Stream the water would suit those who must dip their razors into warm water. All who wish for cold baths will have them as they get further North. You have a sense of affluence in drawing on the Atlantic for your morning bath.
SEA BIRDS.
It is interesting to meet birds hundreds of miles from land. When the ship is going at her greatest speed, twelve or thirteen miles an hour, these birds fly faster, some of them forty and fifty miles, making you feel how they surpass man in all his means of speed. One is astonished at their quickness of sight. You throw pieces of paper, for example, overboard, and though you have not been able for half an hour to see a bird, straightway they will come one by one around you, but you cannot tell whence. Their sharpness of sight also is marvellous, shown in their discovering fishes beneath the surface of the water, even when the sea is troubled.
SOME OF THE CREW ALWAYS AT WORK.
A ship’s work is never done. All the time something is giving way and must be repaired; the sails are to be patched, ropes replaced, and day and night orders issue for taking in or making sail. None in particular are designated for ordinary work, but the order is given to the watch on deck: “Go aloft, some of you, and do this or that,” when they all spring into the shrouds; and when it is seen that enough are on their way the hindmost fall back.