A hint of hurricane—The atoll of perfection,
introducing "Mister Masters himself"
Chapter XIII headpiece
CHAPTER XIII
A hint of hurricane.—The atoll of perfection,
introducing "Mister Masters himself"
Between the Societies and Australia there is a regular line of steamships calling at Raratonga, Samoa, and New Zealand, and it was to avoid this cut-and-dried route that we of the dream ship headed for Palmerston Island, a mere speck on the chart six hundred miles distant.
But we sailed just that trifle too soon that makes all the difference between a fair-weather passage and the reverse. December to April, inclusive, is the hurricane season in this part of the Pacific, when the schooner skippers from Raratonga and other places in the direct path of the cyclonic disturbance see fit to lie up in the comparative safety of Papeete harbour, and we sailed early in the latter month.
I am not claiming that we encountered a hurricane; far from it, for it is doubtful if even the dream ship would have survived a full-fledged demon of the species. In these same latitudes I have seen turf torn from the face of the earth and rolled up like a carpet by sheer force of wind, and mile-wide swaths cut as cleanly as with a sickle through settlement, plantation, and jungle. But these exhibitions of ferocity were witnessed from terra firma. It is a totally different thing from the deck of a small boat at sea.
Surely, if man does not recognize his own insignificance when faced with overwhelming turmoil of wind and wave, he never will. He shrivels on the instant from a being of considerable importance in his own estimation to the semblance of a microbe; and his craft follows suit by dwindling from a sturdy home to a cockleshell. That is why it is best for the mariner, if he can manage it, not to think too deeply during time of stress.
The demon was about, as evidenced by the barometer which fell to twenty-nine, but his main body, writhing in a circle as is his wont, must have missed us, for all we of the dream ship encountered was a lashing of his tail.