Round the Wonderful World Part 12

"But mother doesn't forbid me to have them," she retorted, standing on one leg with her finger in her mouth.

If she refrained from doing only what her mother _did_ forbid her she would have a fairly easy time I think.

It is too stifling to sleep in the cabin, so we will try the deck to-night. It is rather pleasant stepping out on to the warm dry boards when the lights are out. The awning shuts us in overhead, but at the side we can see the smooth water lying white in the moonlight. Here is our place, with our mattresses laid out neatly side by side and the number of our cabin scrawled in white chalk on the wooden boards beside them. There is a story of a certain ape who got loose on board ship and paid a visit to the deck when all the men were asleep! A funny sight it must have been as he landed on the top of one after the other!

In spite of the calmness of the night it is always more or less noisy on a ship: there is the flap of an awning, the crack of a rope, the creaking of the plates, and the frilling away of the water past the ship's side. I lie awake a long time, turning uneasily and feeling the taste of the salt on my lips. At last, low down between the rails, away on the horizon, I see the well-known constellation, the Southern Cross.

You have often heard of it I expect. It is one of the most famous groups of stars in the southern hemisphere and as much beloved by southerners as the Great Bear is by us. As the Great Bear sinks night by night lower in the north so the Southern Cross rises into sight. It is not a very brilliant or even cross, but rather straggly, and the stars are not very large, but it means much--hot skies, blue-black and brilliantly star-spangled, lines of white surf breaking on silvery sand beneath palm trees, fire-flies and scented air--I am growing drowsy at last--sleep is coming.... I must show you the cross another night.

Hullo! it's morning! A Lascar is standing by grinning, with a bucket of water and a deck-swab; they want to begin holystoning down the decks.

How sleepy I am! And as for you, the night steward, who is still on duty, lifts you in his arms and carries you into your bunk, where you'll find yourself when you do wake. It's only five--time for some more hours yet. Sleeping on deck is rather an overrated amus.e.m.e.nt I think!

Before getting out of the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean we have to pa.s.s through the Straits of Babel-Mandeb, which means the Gate of Affliction or Tears, because of the numerous wrecks there have been here. Then we stop at Aden, where the pa.s.sengers going on to India change to another P. & O. steamer, the _Salsette_, which is waiting for them. The _Medina_ goes across to Ceylon and then south to Australia, but the ship following her next week goes straight to India.

It is lucky for Britain that she owns Aden, for it is the doorway at the south end of the Red Sea, as the ca.n.a.l is the doorway at the north end.

Of course it is more important to us that the route to the East should be kept clear than it is to any nation, because in case of difficulties in India we should have to send troops there at once. It is more by good luck than good management that just these little corners of the world, that mean so much, should happen to fall into our possession--Gibraltar, for instance, the gateway of the Mediterranean. And though the British Government refused to have any hand in the making of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, yet afterwards, because the Khedive of Egypt was hard up and willing to sell his shares, we bought at a reasonable rate and have much influence in the management of the ca.n.a.l.

Standing beside us, watching the pa.s.sengers for India climb down the gangway, is a fresh-looking, pink-faced young man of about one-and-twenty. He has a simple look, and you would think he was too young and innocent to go round the world by himself.

"I'm right down glad I'm not going to 'do' India," he remarks. "I'm sick of travelling; I'm just longing to get back."

"To Australia?"

"Yes; I'm a sheep-farmer there. I've worked four years without a break, so I took a holiday in Europe."

Anything less like one's idea of a sheep-farmer it would be hard to find! I always pictured them stern bearded men, with brick-red faces and sinewy limbs. This lad doesn't look as if he had ever been in a strong sun, and his slender loose-jointed legs and arms do not give the impression of an open-air life spent mostly in the saddle.

"You have a sheep-farm? Hard life, isn't it?"

"Best life in the world," he answers with enthusiasm. "Always on horseback, miles of open country, not shut in by beastly houses."

"But there's a lack of water, isn't there?"

"You can always sink a well, that's what they do now. It costs a good deal, but you can get water almost anywhere within reason."

"Are you far out?"

"No, only about three hundred and forty miles from the town where my mother lives. I go down to see her at week-ends; we're lucky in being close to a station, only a fifteen-mile ride."

Three hundred and forty miles! About the distance from London to Berwick! Good place for week-ends, especially with a fifteen-mile ride at one end! I suppose our ideas get small from living in a little country. Pity we can't visit Australia, but we can't manage it this time. That great island-continent and its sister, New Zealand, are well worth seeing. Except for the Canadians there are no people nearer akin to us than the Australasians. The world-famous harbour of Sydney, the great hills clothed in eucalyptus, hiding in their depths vast caverns of stalact.i.tes, the wide open ranges stretching for leagues inland, all these things are attractive. In New Zealand, too, we should find tree-ferns of gigantic size, lovely scenery, and spouting geysers; it is an England set in a very different climate from ours! Then we might pa.s.s on to those strange South Seas, gemmed by coral islands, and to the lat.i.tudes where the mighty albatross swings overhead like an aeroplane, only, unlike an aeroplane, he glides in a never-ending plane without apparent effort or even one flap of his huge twelve-foot wings.

Alas, we can't see everything this trip!

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FLYING FISH.]

CHAPTER XIV

THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN

Now we are right out in the Indian Ocean, and it is a bright day with a certain freshness in the air, instead of that horrible muggy heat that made us feel so languid when we were in the Red Sea. Look over the ship's side and watch the rainbow in the spray; that is one of the prettiest things to see on board. As the vessel cuts through the water she raises a frill of foam on either side--what the sailors call "a bone in her mouth." The frill, rising to a continuous wave along the side, catches the sunlight and a perpetual rainbow dances in it, changing always but remaining ever. Whew! What a rush! Flying fish. Look at them!

These are the first we have seen so near; when they spring out of the water like that and skim along in the air they are not doing it for fun, but to escape a bitter enemy in the water, the bonito, a ferocious large fish who preys upon them; he is their chief foe, but there are many others also. They curve up all together like a glittering bow and slither down again. In dropping back into the sea they make a kind of pattering noise, though, of course, we are too far to hear it, and the fishermen in the small islands near India make use of this in trying to catch the bonito. They go out in boats specially built for the purpose, with a kind of platform overhanging the stern; here they sit and make a splashing with their paddles, at the same time using some little fish, which they catch and breed in tanks, for bait. The noise attracts the large fish, who think there is a shoal of the small fry about, and they jump at the bait and are caught. The catch is often very good, and the boats come back to the huts laden with the ogre fish, destined to be eaten in their turn!

Have you ever thought what it must be like right down there in the deeps below the green water? We can't see because of the light striking the surface, but if we had a water-gla.s.s we could. This is a wooden funnel like that made of paper by village shopkeepers to roll up soft sugar in.

At the broad end is a piece of strong gla.s.s, which is thrust under the water, and by peering through the small end it is possible to make out what is happening below if it is not too deep; anyway, we are too high up out of the water to use one here even if we had it, but in a boat near the coral reefs and islands there are wonderful things to be seen by the help of one of these gla.s.ses.

If you dropped a stone overboard here it would sink and sink gradually for about two miles, until it found a resting-place on a slimy bottom of ooze in a strange dark place. You have a pretty good idea of what a mile is from running in the school races; in imagination set it up on end, and add another to it, and then think of that stone sinking that distance into the grey water! Down there it must be quite dark, for the ma.s.s of water above cuts off the sunlight like a black curtain. There are many beasts living there, nevertheless; lobsters and other sh.e.l.l-fish as well as fish, and in a great many cases those that have been examined are found to have no eyes; it is probable that they have lost their eyesight in the course of many generations, because it would be no help to them in getting a living in those black depths. The subject is not fully understood yet, because _some_ deep-sea fishes have exceptionally good sight, but these may possibly live higher up in the water, where there is a certain amount of glare, and then their eyes would become sharpened by necessity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEEP-SEA FISH.]

The bed of the ocean is not a level plain; if you could see it emptied of all water, you would discover that the land slopes down, sometimes gradually and sometimes with terrific precipices from the sh.o.r.es, and that at the mouths of great rivers there are great banks of mud brought down by the current and piled up, making a fat living for innumerable sea-creatures. But at the very bottom, in this carpet of slime, there are no weeds, or as we might call them sea-vegetables, for they cannot live altogether without light, so the creatures which have their home in what to us would seem this cheerless, miserable retreat, must live on one another. They are differently built from surface fish, because they have always resting upon them the weight of an enormous pile of water.

Picture a pyramid of water two miles high resting on anybody. It would crush him to atoms; but the fish and crustacea down there are used to it, and fitted by nature to support it, and so, if they are brought up to the surface by any means, they burst! In deep-sea trawling it is quite a common occurrence to see fishes literally burst open, with their eyes protruding from the sockets, and this annoys the fishermen, because they are of no use for the market in that condition. It is difficult to imagine creatures unable to live without a great weight resting on them, but as a matter of fact it is the same thing with us in a less degree.

There is a column of air some miles high resting on every one of us, and if we could imagine ourselves lifted out of it into s.p.a.ce, our heads would throb, and our eyes would burst out, and we should be as helpless as a deep-sea fish brought up to the surface.

As for light, they have strange methods down there in the black depths.

A great many of the deep-sea inhabitants carry their own lights, for they are more or less luminous, shining by internal light as glow-worms and fire-flies do. One extraordinary fish has a row of shiny spots stretching from his head to his tail, and when he is swimming about he must look like a liner with a lighted row of ship's ports stretching along his side. Even lobsters and crabs shine luminously, and what use it is to them when they are frequently blind it is hard to conjecture; it must have something to do with catching prey, who are perhaps not blind and may be attracted by the lights. There is at least one fish who hangs out what is like a red lantern, only it is the tip of his fin, and by this means he draws to himself small creatures who swim right into his capacious mouth; thus his dinner comes to him without his having to search for it!

I want to go to the bows, for it never seems to me I am in a ship until I can get to a place where there is nothing to shut one in. These modern liners are horribly shut in, one might as well be in a drawing-room most of the time. Here we are at last, and it is good to draw a deep breath, feeling the huge dome of the sky above and the wide rim of the horizon around with nothing to cut them off. Look down where the ship cleaves the sea with her bows cleanly and beautifully like a living thing.

Hullo! there is a dolphin! We are in luck! Can you see him dancing round us and plunging in under water and coming up again, much as a dog does on land when he goes out for a walk with his master? There is another, and another! What they call a shoal. They go fast enough; I expect we are making about fifteen or sixteen knots, or miles, an hour, which is good going, and yet these little chaps swim round and round, cutting across ahead of us, diving under us and coming up again all the time; to them it is mere child's play, and they really are playing; they are full of fun, and there is no earthly reason why they should behave like that except for amus.e.m.e.nt!

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DOLPHIN.]

There goes the bugle for lunch.

Seems early, you say? As if we had only just finished breakfast? Yes.

Look at your watch. It is hopelessly wrong, of course; so is mine and everyone else's. We are going just about due east now, so we are meeting the sun half-way, so to speak. That is what makes the time different.

You know that when the sun is at the highest point overhead at any place then it is midday, and as the earth spins round from west to east a constant succession of places come beneath him in turn, each getting their midday a little later than the one before. In the British Isles there is really very little difference between the hours when the eastern and western coasts meet the sun. Take Yarmouth, say, and Land's End; there is perhaps something like half an hour between them, but as it would be awkward for railway work and business if every place had a little different time, so, for convenience' sake, one "standard" time is adopted in England, Scotland, and now even in some of the nearest continental countries; this is the hour when the sun is highest above Greenwich, where is our greatest observatory. And this is called midday, even though as a matter of fact the real midday at different places may be earlier or later.

As we journey east across the world, however, we are constantly going forward to meet the sun. We are not only on the earth, which is turning round all the time, but we are going ahead ourselves as well, and out-running the earth, and so we arrive at noon sooner and sooner each day. Our watches of course take no heed of _real_ time as judged by the sun, they are just mechanical and tick away their sixty minutes to each hour whether the sun is overhead or not. At this moment we are about four hours ahead of our friends in England. It is one o'clock here, but they will only be having breakfast! When we live always in one place it is easy to forget that we are on a ball spinning round in s.p.a.ce, but this brings it home to us and makes us realise our absurd position in the universe. Well, let us get our lunch. There is one thing on board, everybody is always ready to eat an amazing amount after they have got over sea-sickness, and the number of meals we manage to consume here would surprise us at home!

As the evening closes in, the day undergoes a change; there is a thick bank of black-looking cloud in the west, and just as the sun goes down this breaks up into wild streamers and shows deep ragged gulfs of livid light between; there are glimpses of green and tawny-red and angry orange flashing through, and then the veil of cloud blots out the light.

Yet it is still, there doesn't seem to be a ripple of wind, and the sea has a curious oily calm upon it. Would you like to come along to the bows after dinner? Don't, if you don't want to. It is more difficult to get there than we expected, for though it looks so calm there is a big swell, and we are rising and falling considerably on the smooth-backed hillocks of water. Creep under these ropes and over this barricade. Then we are free from all the entanglements. There are no dolphins now, but there is a strange light dancing away like fire from the cutting bow; it comes in streaks and flashes, one moment it seems as if it must be only a reflection in the cut water, and the next one could swear there was a real flash.

That is phosph.o.r.escence, which is very common in tropical seas, sometimes the whole sea is alight with it. Look at that! It is a vivid light like a wave of green fire, most beautiful! It is only, however, where the ship strikes the water that we see it to-night. But sometimes, though not often at this season of the year, the whole ocean seems to be alight with it; it is the effect of innumerable millions of tiny sea-creatures floating on the surface, though exactly why they do it at one time more than another is yet unknown. The curious thing is that there are so many different kinds of phosph.o.r.escence; there is the bright fiery kind like this we are seeing now in flashes, and there is a dull luminous kind which sailors call a "white sea." Then the whole sea appears as white as milk, or, as someone who has seen it describes it, as if it were changed to ice covered with a coating of snow. This was on a dark night before the moon had risen, but when she did get up it all disappeared and the sea looked much as usual, glittering only where the beams struck it, except for odd patches of shiny light here and there, and oddly enough exactly the same thing happened the following night.

I'm afraid we shan't be lucky enough to see that.

Is the motion making you uncomfortable? No? I'm glad of that; you're a first-rate sailor. Let us go back to that jolly alcove at the end of the smoking-room looking aft, where we can see the great green-black waves rising suddenly behind us.

Yes, this is distinctly comfortable and quite interesting. It seems as if every wave rose in a great hill suddenly just after we had pa.s.sed the spot! We must have come over it, but sitting like this we didn't feel it, we are riding so smoothly.

If we look out ahead we shall see the same sort of thing happening; we approach a black hillock of water, and just as we get to it it rolls down and disappears under us. The ship is so large that though she climbs those hills, we get the impression that the hills straighten underneath her. You must have noticed something of the same kind in riding a bicycle; if you are running down one hill and see another rising in front, the other one looks terrifically steep, but as you get on to it, it flattens out in an inexplicable way; it is the change in our own position that accounts for the phenomenon.

It is very close to-night and there is an uneasy feeling in the air; the captain did not appear at dinner. It is a good thing that they put off that fancy-dress ball which was to have been held this evening, for there could not have been much dancing. Your costume will come in useful another time. I want to see you sometime as a little Egyptian with a skull-cap and a garment like a flannel night-shirt! But we shall have another chance.

"Hope we're not in for a cyclone," says one of the men, appearing out of the smoking-room with a pipe in his mouth.

"Very unusual at this time of year in the North-East monsoon," replies another as they disappear.