O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas Part 12

"He sat down, and, calling for some coffee, invited me to join in a social cup.

"'Is there plenty of sea-room?' I inquired.

"'Very little sea-room,' he replied; 'but she must take her chance.'

"Then we relapsed into silence.

"About an hour or two after this it became a difficult matter to sit on a chair at all, so much did the vessel pitch and roll.

"The captain had gone on deck, and as I had neither the need nor the desire to follow him, I threw myself on the sofa, at the risk even of offending my good friend and companion, p.u.s.s.y.

"The storm was now raging with terrible fury.

"Two watches were called to shorten sail, and the din and noise of voices could be distinctly heard rising high over the dashing of the waves, and the whistling of the wind among the rigging and shrouds.

Every timber was stretched, every plank seemed to creak and wail in agony; yet the good ship bore it well.

"Tired of the sofa I turned into bed, hoping to have a few hours of sleep; but was very soon obliged to turn out again, having been awakened from a pleasant dream of green fields, pine-clad hills, and a broad, quiet river, where ferns and water-lilies grew, by the crashing of crockery in the steward's pantry. It sounded as if bottles, dishes, plates, and cups were all in a heap in the middle of the floor breaking each other to infinitesimal pieces. And that is precisely what they were doing.

"Things in the saloon were fast verging into a state of chaos, and appeared to be making very merry in my absence. The fender and fire-irons presided over the musical department.

"The captain's big chair was dancing very emphatically, but rather clumsily, with the coal-scuttle as a partner; the table was bowing to the sofa, but the sofa begged to be excused from getting up. The only reasonable-looking article of furniture in the room was a chair, which was merely staggering around with my coat on, while the cat had gone to sleep in my sou'-wester; and while endeavouring to restore quiet and order, I was thrown below the table like a pair of old boots, where, for the want of ability to do anything better, I was fain to remain.

"'Clear away the wreck!' I could now hear the captain's voice bawling, for our fore-mast had gone by the board.

"_His_ voice was not the only one I heard. On pa.s.sing the man at the wheel, I heard the captain ask, 'What! are you getting afraid, man?'

And the brave British voice that so firmly replied 'Not at all, sir!'

explained better than printed volumes could have done the secret of all our naval greatness; for to hearts like his, and hands like his, in many a dark and stormy night, Britannia entrusts her honour, and bravely is it kept and guarded.

"Musing on this fact, I fell soundly to sleep beneath the table, and when I awoke the storm had ceased.

"There are few situations in which a healthy man can be placed that are more full of discomfort than that of being at sea in a small ship during a storm. I do not refer to a mere 'capful of wind;' I mean a great-gun gale. There is, literally speaking, no rest for the sole of the foot.

Tossed about in all directions, in vain do you seek to exchange your chair for the sofa. Probably you are sent rolling off on to the deck, and thankful you ought to be if the cushions are the only things that follow you. Flesh-sore and weary, perhaps you seek for solace in a cup of tea: thankful you may be again if the steward succeeds in pouring it into your cup, instead of spilling it down your neck. Then, if you so far forget the rules of the sea as to place it for a moment on the table without a hand to guard it, you are instantly treated to a gratuitous shower-bath.

"Still the ocean has its pleasures and its charms as well as the land.

My mind, even now, carries me back and away to a scene very different from that which I have just been describing.

"I am sitting in my little cabin. It is a summer's evening, and all is peace within and around my barque. Yonder is my bed, and the little port close by my snow-white pillow is open, and through it steals the soft, cool breeze of evening, and wantonly lifts and flutters the little blue silken hangers. Not far off I can catch glimpses of the wooded hills and flowery valleys of a sunny land. And night after night the light wind that blows from it is laden with the sweet breath of its flowers; and between there lies the ocean, asleep and quiet and still, and beautiful with the tints of reflected clouds.

"Often in the cool night that succeeds a day of heat have I lain awake for hours, fanned by the breath of the sea, gazing on the watery world beneath and beyond me, and the silvery moon and tiny stars, that make one think of home, till sleep stole gently down on a moonbeam, and wafted me off to dreamland.

"But in witnessing even the war of the elements at sea, a sailor often finds a strange, wild pleasure. Enveloped in the thundercloud you mount with every wave to meet the lightning's flash, or descend, like an arrow, into the gulf below--down, down, down, till the sun, lurid and red, is hidden at last from view by the wall of black waters around you.

"Or fancy the picture, which no artist could depict, of a ship far away in ocean's midst by night in a thunderstorm. Dimly through the murky night behold that tumbling sea, lighted only by its own foam and the occasional flash from the storm-cloud. See that dark spot on the sea; it is a ship, and living souls are there--human beings, each with his own world of cares and loves and thoughts that are even now far away, all in that little spot. Whish! now by the pale lightning's flash you can see it all. The black ship, with her bare poles, her slippery, shining deck and wet cordage, hanging by the bows to the crest of that great inky wave. What a little thing she looks, and what a mighty ocean all around her; and see how pale appear the faces of the crew that 'cling to slippery shrouds,' lest the next wave bear them into eternity.

"Whoever has been to prayers at sea during a storm has had a solemn experience he will never forget."

"Perhaps there is no more impressive ocean-scene ever beheld by the sailor," said Captain Ben Roberts, "than the phosph.o.r.escent seas witnessed at times in the tropics." But though far more common in these regions than in the temperate zones, this extraordinary luminosity of the water is sometimes observed around our own coasts.

"I shall always remember," he continues, "the first time I witnessed the phenomenon, though I've often seen it since.

"What a happy day we had had, to be sure! We were a party of five--I but a schoolboy, my comrades little more. It was the first time I had been to that most bewitching of western islands called Skye. We had started off one morning early on a ramble. We simply meant to go somewhere--anywhere, so long as we did not come back again for a night or two. Not that we were not happy enough in the old-fashioned manse of K--. But we wanted change, we wanted adventure if we could find any, and if we did not, then probably we should be able to make some. There was, at all events, the wild mountain peak of Quiraing to be climbed, with its strange top--the extinct crater of a burning mountain. Ah! but long before we came anywhere near it, there was a deal to be done.

"We had started from the beautiful little bay of Nigg, keeping a northerly course over a broad Highland upland.

"It was the month of June; the heather was not purple yet, but it was long and rank and green, and it was inhabited by many a curious wild bird, whose nests we hunted for, but did not rob; we saw some snakes, too, and one of us killed a very long one, and we all thought that boy a very hero, though I know now it was no more dangerous or deadly than a tallow candle.

"But the best fun we got was when we took to horse-catching. There was not much harm in this after all. There were dozens of ponies roaming wild over the green moor, and if they allowed themselves to be caught and ridden for miles through the heather, why, it did not hurt them; they soon danced back again.

"We laughed, and screamed, and whooped, loud enough to scare even the curlews, and that is saying a good deal. I'm not sure, indeed, that we didn't scare the eagles from their eeries; at all events we thought we did. Then we began to ascend Quiraing, a stiff climb and somewhat hazardous; and light-hearted though we were, I believe we were all impressed with the grandeur of the view we caught from between the needle-like rocks that form one side.

"We went down to the plains below more quickly than we came up.

"Presently we came to a little Highland village close to the sea, and there, to our joy, we found that a large fishing-boat was going round the northernmost and east part of the island to Portree, the capital.

For a trifle we managed to take a pa.s.sage. We had lots of bread and cheese in our wallets, and we had some money in our pockets, good sticks, and stout young hearts; so that we should not be badly off even although we should have to trudge on foot back again to the old manse.

Which, by the way, we had to.

"Our voyage was a far longer one in time than we had expected it would be, because the wind fell. But the beauty of the scenery, the hills, the strange-shaped mountains, the rocks and cliffs, with waterfalls tumbling sheer over them and falling into the sea; the sea itself, so calm and blue, and the distant mainland, enshrouded in the purple mist of distance, repaid us for all, and made the day seem like one long, happy dream.

"But daylight faded at last, and just as the gloaming star peeped out there came down upon our boat a very large shoal of porpoises, which the boatman gravely a.s.sured us at first was the great sea-serpent. These creatures were in chase of herrings, but they were so reckless in their rush and so headlong, that we were fain to scream to frighten them off, and even to arm ourselves with stones from the ballast, and throw at those that came too near.

"Night fell at last, and we were still at sea, and the stars came out above us. But if there were stars above us there were stars beneath us too; nay, not only beneath us, but everywhere about and around us. The sea was alive with phosph.o.r.escent animalculae; the wake of the boat was a broad belt of light behind us, every ripple sparkled and shone, and the water that dripped from the oars looked like molten silver."

"Ah!" said I, "that was one of your first experiences of the open sea, wasn't it, Ben?"

"I was only a boy, Nie," replied my friend. "I've had many a sleep in the cradle of the deep since then."

"I was reading this morning," I said, "of that terrible shipwreck in the Atlantic. It puts me in mind of the loss of the _London_. I was in the Bay of Biscay in that very gale, Ben; our vessel unmanageable, wallowing in the trough of the seas, the waves making a clean breach over us; and, Ben, at the very darkest hour of midnight, we saw, by the lightning's gleam, a great ship stagger past us. We were so close that we could have pitched a coil of rope on board. There were no men on her decks; her masts were carried away, and her bulwarks gone, and it was evident she was foundering fast. There were more ships lost, Ben, that night in the Bay of Biscay than ever we shall know of--

"'Till the sea gives up its dead.'"

CHAPTER TEN.

"Throned in his palace of cerulean ice, Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court."

Thomson's "Seasons."

"I don't think," said I, as Captain Ben Roberts and I sat at breakfast one day in a homely old hotel in Bala, North Wales, "I don't think, Ben, my boy, I ever ate anything more delicious in the way of fish than these same lovely mountain trout."

"Well, you see," replied my friend, "we caught them ourselves, to begin with; then the people here know exactly how to cook them. But, Nie, lad, have you forgotten the delicious fries of flying-fish you used to have in the dear old _Niobe_?"

"Almost, Ben; almost."

"Well, I can tell you that you did use to enjoy them, all the same."

"Ay, and I've enjoyed them since many and many is the time in the tropics, and especially in the Indian Ocean."

"So have I," said Ben Roberts. "Funny way they used to have of catching them, though, in the old _Sans Pareil_. Of course you know they will always fly to a light if held over the ship's side?"

"Yes."