All hands were busy on the new rigging. The captain had got up a spare spar and Old Tom Thornton and Stronson, went to work on that. The captain was determined to get up a new mizzen topmast and bend on new sails. Every square inch of canvas spread to the favoring breeze would aid us in the race home.
We had gotten now into the greatest ocean current in the world—the Gulf Stream. Ocean currents are mysterious phenomena. The source of energy required to set and keep the vast masses of water in motion has been productive of endless discussion.
Temperature, barometric pressure, attractive force of the moon, have all been advanced as bringing about ocean currents. Seamen believe that it is the wind that brings about certain oceanic movements. But the winds do not explain the reason entirely—not even in any single case. As to the direct action of the wind on the surface of the sea alone, it has been shown that with a wind blowing at twenty-five miles an hour the surface water would have a movement of not more than fifteen miles in the twenty-four hours! The Gulf Stream is the greatest of the Atlantic currents, if not the greatest current on the wet portion of the globe. It is really a wonderful river—a river flowing through an ocean. Its temperature is different from the surrounding waters, it is of a different color, and the edge of it can be noted almost exactly wherever a ship crosses into or out of the Gulf Stream.
This warm current starts between the coast of Cuba and the Florida reefs, and certainly with this mighty current the wind has absolutely nothing to do. The force of the current is at its maximum strength when it emerges from the Bemimi Straits, between the Bahama Bank on the east and the coast of Florida on the West. Between Fowey Rocks and Gun Gay Light the average depth of the Gulf Stream is 239 fathoms, and it runs at a speed of fifty miles in the twenty-four hours. Occasionally, under particular circumstances, it will speed up to a hundred miles in the twenty-four hours. Little wonder that homeward bound windjammers are glad to strike the Gulf Stream. After we crossed into the clear azure of that current there was a steady tug on the Gullwing’s prow.
“The women-folks are pullin’ her home with their apron strings,” chuckled Captain Bowditch.
I rigged fishing tackle for Phillis and she caught some of the smaller fish of the Gulf Stream—fish which cannot be caught in the waters even a short distance outside of the line of the current. They were brilliant trunk-fish, and angel-fish, and the like; not edible, but interesting to look at.
Shark were plentiful, too, and followed the ship like dogs, to fight for the scraps the cook flung overboard. Thank got a big hook and about a pound of fat pork (he could wheedle anything out of the black cook) bent on a strong line, and we trolled for shark.
We caught one about eight foot long; he was an ugly beast, and fought like a tiger when we got him onto the deck. He would snap at a broomstick and bite it through as neatly as we could have cut it with an axe. A sailor hates a shark just as the ordinary man ashore dislikes a snake.
“I tell you what we’ll do with him,” said Bob Promise, chuckling. “I seen it done on the old Beatrix two years ago. We ‘belled the cat’ with an old he shark, and it’s an all right trick to play on the dirty critters.”
“How d’ye do it?” asked Tom Thornton.