The Captain Assured Us That The Sea Never Assumes A Much Grander Or More
Imposing Aspect Than That Which It Wore On This Occasion.
He called me
to look at it between two and three in the morning when it was at its
Worst; it was certainly very grand, and made a tremendous noise, and the
wind would scarcely let one stand, and made such a roaring in the
rigging as I never heard, but there was not that terrific appearance
that I had expected. It didn't suggest any ideas to one's mind about
the possibility of anything happening to one. It was excessively
unpleasant to be rolled hither and thither, and I never felt the force
of gravity such a nuisance before; one's soup at dinner would face one
at an angle of 45 degrees with the horizon, it would look as though
immovable on a steep inclined plane, and it required the nicest handling
to keep the plane truly horizontal. So with one's tea, which would
alternately rush forward to be drunk and fly as though one were a
Tantalus; so with all one's goods, which would be seized with the most
erratic propensities. Still we were unable to imagine ourselves in any
danger, save that one flaxen-headed youth of two-and-twenty kept waking
up his companion for the purpose of saying to him at intervals during
the night, "I say, isn't it awful?" till finally silenced him with a
boot. While on the subject of storms I may add, that a captain, if at
all a scientific man, can tell whether he is in a cyclone (as we were)
or not, and if he is in a cyclone he can tell in what part of it he is,
and how he must steer so as to get out of it. A cyclone is a storm that
moves in a circle round a calm of greater or less diameter; the calm
moves forward in the centre of the rotatory storm at the rate of from
one or two to thirty miles an hour. A large cyclone 500 miles in
diameter, rushing furiously round its centre, will still advance in a
right line, only very slowly indeed. A small one 50 or 60 miles across
will progress more rapidly. One vessel sailed for five days at the rate
of 12, 13, and 14 knots an hour round one of these cyclones before the
wind all the time, yet in the five days she had made only 187 miles in a
straight line. I tell this tale as it was told to me, but have not
studied the subjects myself. Whatever saloon passengers may think about
a gale of wind, I am sure that the poor sailors who have to go aloft in
it and reef topsails cannot welcome it with any pleasure.
CHAPTER II
Life on Board - Calm - Boat Lowered - Snares and Traps - Land - Driven off
coast - Enter Port Lyttelton - Requisites for a Sea Voyage - Spirit of
Adventure aroused.
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