R^ THE CALL OF THE SEA A yiiOSE ANTHOLOGY THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ^■' ^l^lSkmaKlflfltKMU^Kt ^ ZJ^ •r-'*»- THE CALL OF THE SEA UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME TRAVELLER'S JOY Compiled bv W. G. Watkrs Second Editicn THE POCKET BOOK OF POEMS AND SONGS FOR THE OPEN AIR Compiled by Edward Thomas E. GRANT RICHARDS THE CALL OF THE SEA A PROSE ANTHOLOGY COMPILED BY F. G. AFLALO And the gathering together of the waters called he seas. CENKSIS I. 10 And there was no more sea. KliV. XXI. I LONDON E. GRANT RICHARDS 1907 GC 2 1 DEDICATED IN AFFECTIONATE ADMIRATION TO WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL DOVEN OF I.IVINr. WRITERS ON THE SEA BY THE AUTHOR 831016 PREFACE C INS of omission and commission are the way of every compiler of anthologies, and without doubt this little collection has its share. I can only plead that these are no result of carelessness, but purely of faulty taste, for the passages herein gathered are the result of much weighing, the residue after much sifting, and at any rate I hope that, even though the reader is certain to object to some of my choice, and to regret the absence of favourites of his own, he will bear in mind the difficulties of selection, having in view a moderate compass for the whole. A word is needed with reference to the transla- tions from the classics. To the classical scholar, translation of Homer is heresy. The " modern side" would be equally affronted with the original only. There was no room for both. The choice had to be made, and perhaps my choice has been the wrong one. It may be complained that writers like Mr. Clark Russell and Captain Marryat are very poorly represented, but one aim of this anthology has been to offer as murli variety of aulhorbhip as vii Vlll THE CALL OF THE SEA was found compatible with other considerations. Otherwise, a volume of the same bulk, and approximately of the same range, might without great difficulty have been compiled from the voluminous writings of either writer. The Call of the Sea has a more than abstract meaning for one in whose ears it sings all through the year, and the garnering of these extracts within a hundred yards of its surf has lent enjoy- ment to the task, which has been indeed no task, but a recreation. In its original form, the collection was to have included poetry, but this was antici- pated by the admirable "Sailor's Garland" of Mr. Masefield, who has for the time being most generously dropped anchor in a large prose sister ship that my little craft may have the fair-way to herself. To the publishers, and in many cases also to the authors, named in the following list, I owe my thanks for permission to make use of the material included in the book, and my gratitude must take a more personal turn when I recall the kind assistance and encouragement given to me by Mr. Hilaire Belloc, M.P., Mr. Frank Bullen, Mr. Robert Hichens, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. Eden Phill- potts, Mr. Morley Roberts, Mr. Clark Russell, Mr. Basil Soulsby (Hon. Sec. to the Hakluyt Society, with permission to use many extracts from its valuable reprints), and Mr. H. G. Wells. TABLE OF CONTENTS THE ANCIENTS AND THE SEA Seafarers . . . The Bible The Egyptians in the Red Sea . . . The Bible Shipwreck . . . The Bible The Voyage of Ulysses Honier Counsel for Mariners Hesiod The Dawn of Naviga- tion .... Lucretius Shipwreck . . . Virgil A Stormy Voyage . Ovid . For the Fisherman . Ovid . THE CHA The Immense The Disturber The Unsympathe The Terrible The Inert The Boundless The Excitable The Image of It How to Paint It The Cunning The Malicious The Opaque . A 2 II KACTKR Ol' THE SEA . Joseph Addisou . Fihon Young nc . Fihon Young . Edrisi . F,. de Amicis . Von Humboldt . r. F. X. de Charh . John Kuskin . /,. da Vinci . Victor Hugo . Joseph Conrad . Charles Kiiigsley ix voix , PAGE 2 3 4 lO 14 15 i6 20 23 26 27 2S 31 31 33 33 34 35 36 36 37 X THE CALL OF THE SEA III SCENERY PAGE The Coast-line . . H. D. Thoicau . . 40 Perspective of the Cliffs. . . . Alice Meynell . . 41 The Cliffs of Devon . Eden Phillpotts . . 43 The Cliffs OF Scotland ^i> fFa//(?r6Vij// . . 45 An Essex Sea-Marsh . Rev. S. Bai-ing-Could . 46 A Sea Cavern . . George Macdonald . 48 IV NIGHT AND DAY Night in a Harbour . Charles Kingsley . . 50 Night on a Steamer . R, L. Stevenson . .51 Night IN A Cornish Port £(/«« /'//;7;^(7//j . . 52 Night on the Mediter- ranean . . .A.M. L. Lamartiiie . 53 Dawn on the Iceland Banks .... Pierre Loti . . -54 Dawn in the Light- house . . . . Rudyard Kipling . 56 Dawn in the Light- house .... Filson Young . . 58 Dawn on a Cargo hoat Morley Roberts . . 59 V WEATHER I. CALM A Rough Crossing ' . Colonel Hazvker . . 62 Calm on the Meuiter- RANKAN . .A. M. L. Laniartine . 63 The Mys terv of a Calm F. T. Bitllen. . . 64 Calm off the Horn . John Masefield . . 66 TABLE OF CONTENTS XI II. CHANGE OF WKATHER PAGE In the South Seas . Pierre Loti . . 68 III. FOG The Walls of Grey . /ack London . . 70 IV. STORM The Sorrowful Maister's Predicament . . Williavi Lithgotv . 71 The Fires of St. Elmo P. F. de Quiros . 72 The Fury of It . . Christopher Columbus . 74 Scylla and Charybdis Francois Rabelais . 75 Collision between THE "ERKBUS" and "Terror" . . . Sir James Ross . 76 A Lands.man IN A Storm/, ^rrt^^ . . 78 Helplessness of the Ship . . . • Pierre Loti . . .80 An Emigrant Ship in Bad Weather . . Friedrich Gerstaecker . 82 The Breakinc; Wave . Michael Scott . . 85 Responsibility of the Helmsman . . . /•". T. Dullen ■ 89 The Fleet in a S'juall Tobias Smollett . . 90 The Slave Shi I' . . John Rus kin . . 92 Lightning at Sea . Captain Marryat 94 Lightning at Sea . \V. Clark Russell . 95 The Height of the Stor.M .... Fenimorc Cooper . 98 Greeks in a Storm . A. W. Kin^lake . 98 Off Cape Horn . . W^. P. Sno^v . . 101 FiNDim; THE Wreck . R. L. Stevenson <:> (From the Odyssey ; trans.) "DUT when we had now left the island, nor did any other land appear, but the heaven and the sea, then the son of Saturn reared an azure cloud above the hollow ship ; and the sea became dark beneath it. But it ran for no very long time ; for immediately came the clamouring West wind, rushing with a mighty tempest : and the storm of the wind broke both the cables of the mast ; and the mast fell backwards, and all the tackle was thrown in confusion into the hold ; and he struck the head of the helmsman backward in the ship, and broke all the bones of his head together ; and he fell like unto a diver from the deck, and his noble mind left his bones ; and Jove thundered together, and hurled a thunderbolt upon the ship : and it was entirely whirled round, stricken with the thunderbolt of Jove, and it was filled with sulphur; and my companions fell from the ship. And they, like unto gulls, were borne on the waves around the black ship ; for the deity took away their return. But I kept going about through the ship, until the storm loosed the sides from the keel; and the wave Ijore it along naked. And it broke out the mast at the keel: but a thong was thrown upon it, made from the skin of an ox. With this I bound both together, the keel and the mast : and, HOMER II sitting upon them, I was borne by the destructive •winds. Then indeed the West wind ceased raging with a storm, and quickly the South wind came on, bringing grief to my mind, that I should again measure my way to destructive Charybdis. I was borne along during the whole night ; and together with the rising sun I came to the rock of Scylla and terrible Charybdis. She gulped up the briny water of the sea ; but I, raised on high to the lofty fig-tree, held clinging to it, as a bat, nor could I anywhere either fix myself firmly with my feet, or ascend : for the roots were far off, and the branches were wide apart, and both long and vast, and they overshadowed Charybdis. But I held without ceasing, until she vomited out again the mast and keel ; and it came late to me wishing for it : as late as a man has risen from the forum to go to supper, adjudging many contests of disput- ing youths, so late these planks appeared from Charybdis. And I j)ut down my feel, and my hands over them, to Ije carried along, and I fell with a noise in the middle on the long planks, and sitting upon them, I rowed with my hands. . . . Thus speaking, divine Ulysses went over the threshold ; but with him the strength of Alcinous sent forward a herald, to conduct him to the swift ship and the shore of the sea. And Arete sent women servants with him ; one having a well- 12 THE CALL OF THE SEA washed robe, and garment, and another she sent with him to carry a heavy coffer : and another carried both bread and red wine. But when they came to the ship and the sea, his illustrious con- ductors immediately receiving the things, placed them in the hollow ship, all the drink and meat : and then they strewed a rug and linen for Ulysses, on the deck of the hollow ship, that he might sleep without waking, at the stern ; but he himself em- barked and laid down in silence ; and each of them sat on the benches in order ; and they loosed the cable from the perforated stone ; there they, reclining, threw up the sea with the oar, and sweet sleep fell upon his eyelids, unwakeful, most plea- sant, the nearest like death. But it, like as four- yoked male horses in the plain, all incited together by the blows of the scourge, lifting themselves on high, swiftly pass over the way ; so its prow indeed lifted itself up, and the mighty purple billow of the much-rolling sea rushed behind. And very safely it ran, steadily ; nor could a falcon-hawk, swiftest of birds, have followed it close. So it, running swiftly, cut the waves of the sea, bearing a man who possessed counsels equal to the gods : who before had suffered very many griefs in his mind, both wars of men, and passing the terrible waves : then indeed he slept fearlessly, forgetting whatever things he had suffered. HOMER 13 When a very shining star arose, which especi- ally comes announcing the light of the morning, the mother of day ; at that time then the ship that passes over the sea neared the island. Now there is a certain haven of Phorcys, the old man of the sea, amongst the people of Ithaca ; and there are two abrupt projecting shores in it, inclining towards the port, which swell from the great wave of hard blowing winds from without ; but within well-benched ships remain without a chain, when they reach the goal of the mooring- station. . . . There they drove in, being before acquainted with it ; it indeed ran ashore more than half its length, hastening ; for by the hands of such rowers was it urged on. And they, disembarking from the well-yoked ship to the shore, first lifted Ulysses out of the hollow ship, with his very linen and beautiful rug, and placed him, overcome with sleep, on the sand. . . . Thus having spoken, he received from him his brazen spear, and extended it on the deck of the ship rowed on both sides ; and he himself em- barked in the sea-traversing ship. And then he sat down in the stern ; and he seated Thcocly- menus near himself: and they (the sailors) loosed the halsers. And Telemachus, exhorting his com- panions, bade them make ready the tackle ; and they eagerly obeyed. And, raising the pine mast, 14 THE CALL OF THE SEA they placed it within the hollow mast hole, and bound it down with cables ; and they hoisted the white sails with well-twisted bull-hides. And to them blue-eyed Minerva sent a favourable gale, blowing sharply upon them through the air, that the ship, running along, might very quickly make its way over the briny water of the sea. And they came to Crouni and to fair-streamed Chalcis. But the sun set, and all the ways were overshadowed. And it reached Pheras, driven on by a favourable gale from Jove ; and to divine Elis, where the Epeans rule. From thence he sent it on to the swift islands, meditating whether he should escape death or be taken. Homer. Counsel for Mariners "Cy •'Cy -^:iy (From The Works and Days ; trans.) TDRAISE a small vessel, but put your cargo in a large one. . . . For fifty days after the summer solstice, when the summer season of labour is past, sailing is seasonable for men : neither would you wreck your ship, nor would the sea drown the crew, unless of design Neptune, who shakes the earth, or Jupiter, king of the Gods, should choose to destroy them ; for these decide the end of good folk and of bad. But at that season the winds LUCRETIUS IS blow Steady, the sea is safe ; then you are safe to trust the winds and drag down your swift ship to the water's edge and put the cargo on board. . . . Another good time for sailing is in the spring. . . . I praise not the spring voyage, for it must be per- formed in haste. . . . But death in the waves is fearful. ... Do not put all your belongings in hollow ships, but leave the bulk behind and take the smaller portion as cargo. Hesiod. N' The Dawn of Navigation ' <::i^ (From The Nature of Things ; trans.) OR did the boisterous floods of the sea in those times dash ships and men on the rocks. The ocean, often rising and swelling, as it does to- day, stormed in vain and to no purpose, and laid aside its empty threats without effect ; nor could the deceitful allurement of its calm water entice with its smiling waves anyone into danger ; for the daring art of navigation was then unknown. . . The sea was next covered with ships for the sake of perfumes. Lucretius. 1 6 THK CALL OF THE SKA Shipwreck ^o -o -v:> <:> (From the Aincid ; trans.) 'T*HUS having said, whirhng the point of his spear, he struck the hollow mountain's side and the winds, as in a formed battalion, rush forth at every vent, and scour over the lands in a hurri- cane. They press upon the ocean, and at once, east, and south, and stormy south-west, plough up the whole deep from its lowest bottom, and roll vast billows to the shores. The cries of the seamen succeed, and the cracking of the cordage. In an instant clouds snatch the heavens and day from the eyes of the Trojans : sable night sits brooding on the sea, thunder rolls from pole to pole, the sky glares with repeated flashes, and all nature threatens them with immediate death. . . . A tempest, roaring from the north, strikes across the sail, and heaves the billows to the stars. The oars are shattered : then the prow turns away, and exposes the side to the waves. A steep moun- tain of waters follows in a heap. These hang on the towering surge ; to those the wide-yawning deep discloses the earth between two waves : the whirling tide rages with mingled sand. Three other ships the south wind, hurrying away, throws on hidden rocks ; rocks in the midst of the ocean, which the Italians call Altars, a vast ridge rising to the surface of the sea. Three from the deep VIRGIL 17 the east wind drives on shoals and flats, a piteous spectacle ! and dashing on the shelves, it encloses them with mounds of sand. Before the eyes of ALneas himself, a mighty billow, falling from the height, dashes against the stern of one which bore the Lycian crew, and faithful Orontes, the pilot, is tossed out and rolled headlong, prone into the waves ; but her the driving surge thrice whirls around in the same place, and the rapid eddy swallows up in the deep. Then, floating here and there on the vast abyss, are seen men, their arms and planks, and the Trojan wealth among the waves. Now the storm overpowered the stout vessel of Ilioneus, now that of brave Achates, and that in which Abas sailed, and that in which old Alethes : all, at their loosened and disjointed sides, receive the hostile stream, and gape with chinks. . . . The sire, having by these words soothed and cheered the heart of the goddess, yokes his steeds to his golden car, puts the foaming bit into their fierce mouths, and throws out all the reins. Along the surface of the seas he nimbly glides in his azure car. The waves subside, and the swelling ocean smooths its liquid pavement under the thundering axle : the clouds fly off the face of the expanded sky. Then appear the various forms of his retinue, unwieldy whales, and the aged train C 1 8 THE CALL OF THE SEA of Glaucus, and Palemon, I no's son, the swift Tritons, and the whole band of Phorcus. On the left are Thetis, Melite, and the virgin Panopa;, Nesa:e, Spio, Thalia, and Cymodoce. Upon this, soft joys in their turn diffuse themselves through the anxious soul of father yEneas. f^orthwith he orders all the masts to be set up, and the yards to be stretched along the sails. At once they all tacked together, and together let go sometimes the left-hand sheets, sometimes the right : at once they turn and turn back the lofty end of the sail- yards : friendly gales waft the fleet forward. Palinurus, the master-pilot, led the closely-united squadron : towards him the rest were ordered to steer their course. And now the dewy night had almost reached the middle of her course ; the weary sailors, stretched along the hard benches under the oars, relaxed their limbs in peaceful repose ; when the god of sleep, gliding down from the ethereal stars, parted the dusky air, and dispelled the shades ; to you, O Palinurus, directing his course, visiting you, though innocent, with dismal dreams : and the god took his seat on the lofty stern, in the similitude of Phorbas, and poured forth these words from his lips : Palinurus, son of lasius, the seas themselves carry forward the fleet ; the gales blow fair and steady, the hour for rest is given. Recline your head, and steal your weary eyes from VIRGIL 19 labour. Myself awhile will discharge your duty. To whom Palinurus, with difficulty lifting up his eyes, answers : Do you then bid me be a stranger to the aspect of the calm sea and its quiet waves ? Shall I confide in this extraordinary apparition? Why should I trust ^neas to the mercy of the fallacious winds, after having been so often de- ceived by the treacherous aspect of a serene sky ? These words he uttered, while, fixed and clinging, he did not part with the rudder, and held his eyes directed to the stars ; when, lo ! the god shakes over both his temples a branch drenched in the dew of Lethe, and impregnated with soporofic Stygian influence ; and, while he is struggling against sleep, dissolves his swimming eyes. Scarcely had unexpected slumber begun to relax his limbs, when the god, leaning on him with part of the stern broke off, plunged him headlong into the limpid waves, often calling on his friends in vain : taking flight, raised himself on his wings aloft into the air. Meanwhile, the fleet runs its watery course on the plain with ecjual security, and, fearless, is conducted by father Neptune's promises. And now, wafted forward, it was even coming up to the rocks of the Sirens, once difficult of access, and white with the bones of many (at that time the hoarse rocks resounded far with the continual buffeting of the briny waves) ; when father /Eneas perceived the fluctuating galley to 20 THE CALL OF THE SEA reel, having lost its pilot ; and he himself steered her through the darkened waves, deeply affected and wounded in his soul for the misfortune of his friend. Ah, Palinurus, who hast too much con- fided in the fair aspect of the skies and sea ! naked wilt thou lie on unknown sands ! Virgil. A Stormy Voyage ^^^ 'O^ ^c>- (Froin the Tristia ; trans.) A H, wretched me ! What mountains of water ■^ are heaped aloft ! You would think that this very instant they would reach the highest stars. What abysses yawn as the sea recedes ! You would suppose that this very instant they would extend to black Tartarus. On whichever side you look, there is nothing but sea and sky ; the one swelling with billows, the other lowering with clouds. Between the two the winds rage in fear- ul hurricane. The waves of the ocean know not which master to obey. For at one moment Eurus gathers strength from the glowing east, at another instant comes Zephyrus, sent from the evening west. At one time the icy Boreas comes ranging from the dry north ; at another, the south wind wages battle with adverse front. The steersman is at fault : and he knows not what to avoid, or OVID 21 what course to take. Skill itself is at a loss amid these multiplied evils. In truth, we are on the verge of destruction, and there is no hope of safety, but a fallacious one ; as I speak, the sea dashes o'er my face. The waves will overwhelm this breath of mine, and in my throat, as it utters vain entreaties, shall I receive the waters that are to bring my doom. But meantime my afifectionate wife is bewailing nothing else but that I am an exile ; this one portion alone of my misery does she know and lament. She is not aware how my body is tossed on the boundless ocean ; she knows not that I am driven to and fro by the winds ; she knows not that death is impending o'er me. 'Tis well, ye Gods, that I suffered her not to embark with me : so that death might not have to be twice endured by wretched me ! But now, although I perish, since she is safe from danger, doubtless I shall still survive in her one half of myself. Ah, wretched me ! how the clouds glisten with the instantaneous flash. How dreadful the peal that re-echoes from the sky of heaven. The timbers of our sides are struck by the waves, with blows no lighter than when the tremendous charge of the balista beats against the walls. The wave that now is coming on o'ertops all the others ; 'tis the one that comes after the ninth and before the eleventh. 2 2 THE CALL OF THE SEA I fear not death ; 'tis the dreadful kind of death ; take away the shipwreck ; then death will be a gain to me. 'Tis something for one, either dying a natural death or by the sword, to lay his breath- less corpse in the firm ground, and to impart his wishes to his kindred, and to hope for a sepulchre, and not to be food for the fishes of the sea. . . . The guardian of the Erymanthian Bear is im- mersed in the ocean, and by the influence of her Constellation arouses the waves, while I am ploughing the Ionian Sea by no inchnation of my own ; but apprehension itself forces me to be bold. Ah, wretched me ! by how tremendous a gale is the sea aroused, and how the sand seethes again as it is ploughed up from the lowest depths. The waves, no lower than a mountain, are hurled over the prow and the curving poop, and dash against the resemblances of the Deities. The pine- wood texture creaks ; the rigging, with loud noise, is beaten to and fro ; and the very ship groans responsively to my woes. The sailor, betraying his fear by the paleness of an ice-cold chill, now passively follows his bark o'ercome by the storm, and guides it not by his skill. Just as the driver, failing in his strength, loosens the useless reins on a horse of unbending neck, so do I behold our charioteer set the sails of the ship, not in the direction that he desires, but whither the raging OVID 23 current of the sea is driving us ; and unless /Eolus sends breezes from another quarter, I shall be carried to lands now forbidden to be approached by me. For, lUyria being descried afar to the left, the forbidden shores of Italy are beheld by me. May the wind, I pray, cease to blow towards the forbidden regions, and together with me, may it obey the great Deity. While I am speaking, and am, at the same moment, both longing and fearing to be hurried back again, with what tre- mendous force does the wave lash upon our sides ! Spare me, ye Deities of the azure ocean, spare me ; let it be enough that Jove is incensed with me : save my wearied life from a cruel death, if, indeed, one who is already undone can possibly be saved from perishing. Ovid. For the Fisherman ■'C^ -;iy <;:i>' (From the Halieuticon ; trans.) T)UT I would not recommend you to go out into the midst of the ocean, nor to try the depths of the open sea. You will do better to regulate your cable according to each kind of locality. At one time, the spot may be rugged with rocks ; such demands the pliant fishing-rods whereas the smooth shore requires the not. Does some lofty mountain send its deepening shadows 24 THE CALL OF THE SEA over the sea, according to their different natures, some fish avoid, and some seek, such a spot. If the sea is green from the weeds that grow at the bottom ... let him apply patience, and let him watch by the soft seaweed. Nature has designed^ in a varied manner, the bottom of the ocean, and she has not willed that all fish should frequent the same haunts ; for there are some that love the open sea, such as the mackerel, and the sea-ox, and the darting hippurus, and the gurnet with its swarthy back, and the valuable helops, unknown in our waters, and the hardy sword-fish, not less dangerous than a sword with its blow, and the timid tunnies that fly in large shoals. . . . Ovid. II CHARACTER OF THE SEA 1 cannot see the heavings or this prodigious bulk of waters, even in a calm, without a very pleasing- astonish- ment ; but when it is worked up in a tempest, so that the horizon on every side is nothing but foaming billows and floating mountains, it is impossible to describe the agree- able horror that rises from such a prospect. A troubled ocean, to a man who sails upon it, is, I think, the biggest object that he can see in motion, and, consequently, gives his imagination one of the highest kinds of pleasure that can arise from greatness. Joseph Addison (from The Spectator). The Disturber ^cy <:> -^^y (From The Sands of Pleasure) 'yHE sea is the great disturber. Nothing human can endure for long unchanged in its presence ; no work of man's hands, or of his thoughts, or even of his character and qualities, but must ultimately go down before its eternal force ; nothing of himself, flesh or spirit, but must thrill and change with the pulses of its unquiet heart. Its vastness is confounding, and towers over us, dwindling us to pin-points of unimport- ance ; beside its movements, calm and punctual, laid out in cycles of the everlasting, the most majestic of our actions seem as petty as the fret- ting trill of an insect's wing ; its storms hush our wars and revolutions ; our deepest silences are audible in its profound calms ; and within its age the twinkling moments of our life pass and dis- appear unheeded into the murk of eternity. Filson Young. 27 28 THE CALL OF THE SEA The Unsympathetic '^i>' ^o ^^^ (From Ireland at the Cross Roads) AND so to-day the Irish who dwell within ■^^ journey of these wild shores retain in their nature the dislike and terror of the sea. Its mists relax their energies, it fills them with a sense of something always greater than them- selves that can bring their efforts to instant and disastrous confusion. While they inhabit these shores, though they build boats and cast nets and go abroad in a timid search for the sea's treasures, they can have nothing in common with it but the reflection of its bright shining in their eyes, and the movements of its unquiet heart in their blood. The sea, indeed, does little for Ireland. Into the stately waterways of Cork, of Gal way, of Limerick, the tide twice a day comes brimming up, filling with its inexhaustible flood the spaces between the imposing, empty warehouses. But its majestic invitation goes unheeded ; the beauti- ful buildings, raised when Ireland had a popula- tion and a trade, are crumbling and deserted ; great chambers that once resounded with the inspiring clamour of business, know it no longer ; and where formerly the stevedores sweated, carts rattled, and merchants made their exchanges, little barefoot children now play undisturbed in the sun- FILSON YOUNG 29 shine. These western ports were nobly furnished by nature and by man for tlie accommodation of shipping, but the ships pass them by far out at sea. They just exist, derelict and hnlf ruinous, unvisited save by the punctual tides. And along a coast, unmatched in the world for its bays and inlets and roadsteads, you may note blight and desolation marking the sea's revenges. Denied its toll of commerce and ocean-going ships, it sweeps round the coast from Donegal to Cork, savagely withholding support and liveli- hood. To look at the map one might think there was not a mile along the western coast of Ireland where a boat could not be launched ; but as a matter of fact, places where the business of fish- ing can be carried on are but few and far between. The bays are there, and the deep water road- steads ; but the little breakwaters and harbours in the shelter of which small boats might be kept, are missing — there is no money to build them. The great Atlantic surges come smashing in from their thousand miles journeys, unchecked by any artifice of man, and where they throw their weight on the shore no boats can profitably be kept. . . . . . . And if at the fall of some summer evening you walk along a mile of these lonely shores, you may almost believe you are the last man alive on the earth. The country untilled, ungrazed, rolls upon every side upwards to the clouds. There is 30 THE CALL OF THE SEA not a sign of man or of beast ; not even the bark of a dog, that wholesome signal of human occupa- tion, falls on your ear. The world seems like a house from which the inhabitants have gone out and locked the door behind them, and left you to look in through the windows at the empty roorps. The silence is broken only by the crying of the gulls and by the lap of the waves on the shore. They come marching in from the sunset line from the cold, restless desert of the ocean, reminding the solitary watcher of the one ultimate solution of all human problems. For the ocean is the one great living thing in all this solitary prospect, the thing that was from the beginning and will always be ; it alone, with its wrinkled inscrutable face and mysterious respirations, is an earnest of the things that go on. What wonder if the peasant, standing amid the ruin of human industry on its margin, should regard it as the separating barrier between him and the world } Enemy and avenger though it be, the track of the sunset across it seems the one escape from it, the one pathway to hope and the fulfilment of life. What wonder if he also should " long to tread that golden path of rays," and believe that it must indeed lead him to some brighter destiny? Filso7i Youtig. EDMONDO DE AMICIS 3 1 The Terrible ^o -<:> -;:n, ^;:^ (From A Description of Spaiu ; trans.) TTHE ocean encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth, and all beyond it is unknown. No one has been able to verify anything concern- ing it, on account of its difficult and perilous navi- gation, its great obscurity, its profound depth, and frequent tempests, through fear of its mighty fishes, its haughty winds ; yet there are many islands in it, some peopled, others not. There is no mariner that dares enter on its deep waters, or those who have done so have merely kept along its coasts, fearful of departing from them. The waves of this ocean, though they roll as high as mountains, yet maintain themselves unbroken, for if they broke, then no ship could plough them. Edrisi. The Inert ■<;> n:^ ^;:^ -"Oy (From SuirOccano) T L mare si mostrava quella mattina in uno de suoi aspctti piii brutti e piii odiosi : immobile sotto una volta bassa di nuvole gonfie e inerti, di colore giallo sporco, d'un'apparenza viscida, come se fosse tutta una bellctta di terra grassa, in cui uii rampone da pcsca avcssc a rimancre confilto come 32 THE CALL OF THE SEA una stecca nel mastice ; e pareva che non vi doves- sero guhzare dei pesci, ma delle bestie deformi e immonde, del suo stesso colore. Un aspetto simile picsentano forse le pianure della regione occi- dentale del Mar Caspio, quando son coperte dalle eruzioni dei vulcani di fango. Se fosse vero che questo immenso mare, salato come il sangue, e dotato d'una circolazione, d'un polso e d'un cuore, non e un elemento inorganico, ma uno smisurato animale vivente e pensante, avrei detto quella mattina ch'egli volgeva in mente i piu sconci pen- sieri, farneticando in uno stato di mezzo assopi- mento, come un bruto briaco. Ma neanche risveg- liava I'idea della vita, poiche non v'era un respire di vento, e sulla sua faccia non appariva ne una contrazione ne una ruga. Dava I'immagine di quell' angolo d'oceano deserto, rimasto per molto tempo inesplorato, che si stende fra la corrente di Humboldt e quella che le va incontro dal centro del Pacifico, posto fuori delle grandi vie della navigazione, dove non si vede ne vela, ne balena, n6 gavotta, n6 alcione ; dai confini del quale tutto fugge, ogni indizio di vita dispare ; e se il vento o la tempesta vi gettano qualche volta un basti- mento smarrito, pare ai navigatori di esser caduti nelle acque d'un mondo morto. Edmondo de Amicis. p. F. XAVIER DK CHARLEVOIX 33 The Boundless ^o^ ^;:> ^:;> (From Cosmos; trans.) A LL who possess an ordinary degree of mental ■^^ activity, and delight to create to themselves an inner world of thought, must be penetrated with the sublime image of the infinite, when, gazing around them on the vast and boundless sea, in- voluntarily the glance is attracted to the distant horizon where air and water blend together, and the stars continually rise and set before the eyes of the mariner. This contemplation of the eternal play of the elements is clouded, like every human joy, by a touch of sadness and of longing. Von Humboldt. The Excitable o ^;:> - (From A History of Si. Domingo; trans.) n^HE sea of those islands is commonly more tranquil than ours ; but, like certain people who are excited with difficulty, and whose trans- ports of passion are as violent as they are rare, so when the sea becomes irritated, it is terrible. It breaks all bounds, overflows the country, sweeps away all things that oppose it, and leaves frightful ravages behind to mark the extent of its inunda- tions. It is after these tempests, known by the 34 THE CALL OF THE SEA name of hurricanes, that the shores are covered with marine shells, which greatly compass in lustre and beauty those of the European seas. P. F. Xavier de Charlevoix. The Image of It -=i>- -^^ ^=^ (From The Harbours of England) T)UT Turner found during his Southern Coast tour that the sea was not this : that it was, on the contrary, a very incalculable and unhorizontal thing, setting his " water-mark " sometimes on the highest heavens, as well as on sides of ships ;— very breakable into pieces, half of a wave separable from the other half, and on the instant carriageable miles inland ;— not in any wise limiting itself to a state of apparent liquidity, but now striking like a steel gauntlet, and now becoming a cloud and vanishing, no eye could tell whither ; one moment a flint cave, the next a marble pillar, the next a mere white fleece, thickening the thundery rain. He never forgot those facts ; never afterwards was able to recover the idea of positive distinction between sea and sky, or sea and land. Steel gauntlet, black rock, white cloud, and men and masts gnashed to pieces and disappearing in a few breaths and splinters among them ; — a litde blood on the rock angle, like red seaweed, sponged LEONARDO DA VINCI 35 away by the next splash of the foam, and the glistening granite and green water all pure again in vacant wrath. So stayed by him, for ever, the Image of the Sea. John Ruskin. How to Paint It '^^^ '':^ ^c> (From MS. Notebooks; trans.) T F you wish to represent a tempest properly, consider and set down exactly what are the results when the wind blowing over the face of the sea and of the land lifts and carries with it every thing that is not immovable in the general mass. . . . Let the sea be wild and tempestuous, and between the crests of its waves it should be covered with eddying foam, and the wind should carry the finer spray through the stormy air after the manner of a thick and all-enveloping mist. Of the ships that are there, some you should show with sail rent and the shreds of it flapping in the air in company with the broken halyards, and some of the masts broken and gone by the board, and the vessel itself lying disabled and broken by the fury of the waves, with some of the crew shrieking and clinging to the fragments of the wreck. You should show the clouds, driven by the impetuous winds, hurled against the high mountain tops, and there wreathing and eddying 36 THE CALL OF THE SEA like waves that beat upon the rocks ; the very air should strike terror through the murky dark- ness occasioned therein by the dust and mist and thick clouds. Leonardo da Vinci. The Cunning" <^ <::>' "^^ (From Les Travailleiirs de la Mer) T^'ORDINAIRE la mer cache ses coups. Elle reste volontiers obscure. Cette ombre in- commensurable garde tout pour elle. II est tr6s rare que le myst^re renonce au secret. Certes, il y a du monstre dans la catastrophe, mais en quantity inconnue. La mer est patente et secrete; elle se ddrobe, elle ne tient pas k divulguer ses actions. Elle fait un naufrage, et le recouvre ; I'engloutissement est sa pudeur. La vague est hypocrite ; elle tue, rec^le, ignore et sourit. Elle rugit, puis moutonne. Victor Hugo. The Malicious ''^:>- 'Qy ■<;:> (From The Mirror of the Sea) A LREADY I looked with other eyes upon the sea. I knew it capable of betraying the generous ardour of youth as implacably as, in- different to evil and good, it would have betrayed CHARLES KINGSLEY 37 the basest greed or the noblest heroism. My con- ception of its magnanimous greatness was gone. And I looked upon the true sea — the sea that plays with men till their hearts are broken, and wears stout ships to death. Nothing can touch the brooding bitterness of its heart. Open to all and faithful to none, it exercises its fascination for the undoing of the best. To love it is not well. It knows no bond of plighted troth, no fidelity to misfortune, to long companionship, to long devo- tion. The promise it holds out perpetually is very great ; but the only secret of its possession is strength, strength — the jealous, sleepless strength of a man guarding a coveted treasure within his gates. Joseph Conrad. The Opaque 'O '<;:> -"O (From At Last) ■\ 7ERY remarkable, meanwhile, and unexpected, was the opacity and seeming solidity of the ocean when looked down on from the bows. Whether sapphire under the sunlight, or all but black under the clouds, or laced and streaked with beads of foam, rising out of the nether darkness, it looks as if it could resist the hand ; as if one might almost walk on it ; so unlike any liquid, as seen 38 THE CALL OF THE SEA near shore or inland, is this leaping, heaving plain, reminding one, by its innumerable conchoidal curves, not of water, not even of ice, but rather of obsidian. Charles Kifigsley. Ill SCENERY Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachu- setts : the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay ; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre ; the wrist at Truro ; and the sandy fist at Provincetown,— behind which the State stands on her guard, with her back to the Green Mountains, and her feet planted on the floor of the ocean, like an athlete protecting- her Bay, — boxing with north- east storms, and, ever and anon, heaving up her Atlantic adversary from the lap of earth,— ready to thrust forward her other fist, which keeps guard the while upon her breast at Cape Ann. H. D. Thoreau. Perspective of the Cliffs -cy ^Ci^ (From The Spirit of Place) TT is the law whereby the eye and the horizon answer one another that makes the way up a hill so full of universal movement. All the land- scape is on pilgrimage. The town gathers itself closer, and its inner harbours literally come to light ; the headlands repeat themselves ; little cups within the treeless hills open and show their farms. In the sea are many regions. A breeze is at play for a mile or two, and the surface is turned. There are roads and curves in the blue and in the white. Not a step of your journey up the height that has not its replies in the steady motion of land and sea. Things rise together like a flock of many- feathered birds. . . . ... Up at the top of the seaward hill your first thought is one of some compassion for sailors, inasmuch as they sec but little of their sea. A child on a mere Channel cliff looks upon spaces and sizes that they cannot see in the Pacific, on the ocean side of the world. Never in the solitude of tlic blue water, never between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, never between the Islands and the West, has the seaman seen anything but a little circle of sea. The Ancient Mariner, when he 4" 42 THE CALL OF THE SEA was alone, did but drift through a thousand narrow solitudes. The sailor has nothing but his mast, indeed. And but for his mast he would be isolated in as small a world as that of a traveller through the plains. Round the plains the horizon lies with folded wings. It keeps them so perpetually for man, and opens them only for the bird, replying to flight with flight. A close circlet of waves is the sailor's famous offing. His offing hardly deserves the name of horizon. To hear him you might think something of his offing, but you do not so when you sit down in the centre of it. As the upspringing of all things at your going up the heights, so steady, so swift, is the subsidence at your descent. The further sea lies away, hill folds down behind hill. The whole upstanding world, with its looks serene and alert, its distant replies, its signals of many miles, its signs and communications of light, gathers down and pauses. This flock of birds, which is the mobile landscape, wheels and goes to earth. The Cardinal weighs down the audience with his downward hands. Farewell to the most delicate horizon. Alice Meynell. EDEN PHILLPOTTS 43 The Cliffs of Devon o -Qy ^^ (From My Devon Year) XJO county is richer in splendour of great preci- pices looking out upon broad and narrow seas than this our Devon ; but though the southern cliffs lack that awful austerity and abiding gloom of the northern crags, though their pinnacles and serrated edges and escarpments are but pigmies in altitude when compared with the huge foreheads that frown upon the Atlantic from Welcombe to the Foreland, yet Nature has compensated their shortcomings of size, and bestowed upon them a beauty and an infinite variety of colour and form not met with where the great ocean waves break and thunder at their journey's end. There, even though the sea has slept for many summer days, and sinks and rises with peace as profound and suggestive as the slumber of a giant, the accustomed striving and unrest are reflected in the dark precipices above it, in the tremendous acclivities and the prevalent geological formation of huge and gloomy planes that suck up direct sunshine, as a sponge soaks liquid, ami are nothing brightened. They stare, these huge cliff- faces, with blind eyes into the West ; they call for sad human hearts to chime with their sobriety ; they breathe of ceaseless war, of agonized battle with the West wind and all its unnumbered hosts 44 THE CALT, OF THE SEA of the sea. Setting sunlight gilds their slaty shale, and brightens it into polished ebony and into gold ; they frown at the evening light until its glory dies and the foam-ridges glimmer grey ; then familiar darkness huddles down upon them, and they wait alert, watchful, for the first sigh of the awakened enemy, the first throb and spout of some giant wave at their feet. These cliffs im- press some spirits with aversion, yet from others they win such sympathy in their struggle as Pro- metheus himself won, but seldom the scorched and blasted crags of Caucasus that made his pillow. . . , There came now a growing growl from the waters, and here and there, against some solitary seaward rock, a sheaf of silver feathers shone upwards, then fell with a sigh to fret the wave that brought it. The tide came in again, and as it returned, sweeping the ledges one by one, lifting their shaggy weeds, pouring pure sea into each pool, sliding nearer and nearer with gentle, hog- backed waves that hid their strength, I passed before it and retreated by cliff-ways where the honeysuckle, the golden-rod, and the burnet-rose flourished together aloft, and made no quarrel with the wind that dwarfed and stunted them and robbed them of adult shape. Eden Phillpotts. SIR WALTER SCOTT 45 The Cliffs of Scotland -c> <:> (From The Pirate) T N front lay the sea, into which two headlands, which formed the extremities of the bay, pro- jected their gigantic causeways of dark and sable rocks, on the ledges of which the gulls, scouries, and other sea-fowl appeared like flakes of snow ; while, upon the lower ranges of the cliff, stood whole lines of cormorants, drawn up alongside of each other, like soldiers in their battle array, and other living thing was there none to see. The sea, although not in a tempestuous state, was disturbed enough to rush on these capes with a sound like distant thunder, and the billows, which rose in sheets of foam half-way up these sable rocks, formed a contrast of colouring equally striking and awful. Betwixt the extremities, or capes, of these pro- jecting headlands there rolled, on the day when Mertoun visited the scene, a deep and dense aggregation of clouds, through which no human eye could penetrate, and which, bounding the vision, and excluding all view of the distant ocean, rendered it no unapt representation of the sea in the Vision of Mirza, whose extent was concealed by vapours, and clouds, and storms. The ground, rising stee])ly from the sea-beach, permitting no view into the interior of the country, appeared 46 THE CALL OF THE SEA scene of irretrievable barrenness, where scrubby and stunted heath, intermixed with the long bent or coarse grass, which first covers sandy soils, were the only vegetables that could be seen. Sir Walter Scott. An Essex Sea-Marsh <:iy -q^ (From Mehalah) ■DETWEEN the mouths of the Blackwater and the Colne, on the east coast of Essex, lies an extensive marshy tract veined and freckled in every part with water. It is a wide waste of debatable ground contested by sea and land, sub- ject to incessant incursions from the former, but stubbornly maintained by the latter. At high tide the appearance is that of a vast surface of moss or Sargasso weed floating on the sea, with rents and patches of shining water traversing and dappling it in all directions. The creeks, some of consider- able length and breadth, extend many miles in- land, and are arteries whence branches out a fibrous tissue of smaller channels, flushed with water twice in the twenty-four hours. At noon- tides, and especially at the equinoxes, the sea asserts it royalty over this vast region, and over- flows the whole, leaving standing out of the flood only the long island of Mersea, and the lesser REV. S. BARING-GOULD 47 islet, called the Ray. This latter is a hill of gravel rising from the heart of the Marshes, crowned with ancient thorn trees, and possessing, what is denied the mainland, an unfailing spring of purest water. At ebb, the Ray can only be reached from the old Roman causeway, called the Strood, over which runs the road from Colchester to Mersea Isle, connecting formerly the city of the Trino- bantes with the station of the count of the Saxon shore. But even at ebb, the Ray is not approach- able by land unless the sun or east wind has parched the ooze into brick ; and then the way is long, tedious and tortuous, among bitter pools and over shining creeks. It was perhaps because this ridge of high ground was so inaccessible, so well protected by nature, that the ancient in- habitants had erected on it a rath^ or fortified camp of wooden logs, which left its name to the place long after the timber defences had rotted away. A more desolate region can scarce be conceived, and yet it is not without beauty. In summer, the thrift mantles the marshes with shot satin, passing through all gradations of tint from maiden's blush to lily while. Thereafter a purple glow steals over the waste, as the sea lavender bursts into flower, and simultaneously every creek and pool is royally fringed with sea aster. A little later the glass- wort, that shot up green and transparent as 48 THE CAM, OF THE SEA emerald glass in the early spring, turns to every tinge of carmine. Rev. S. Baring-Gould. A Sea Cavern -^^ "Cy -Qy (From Malcohn) TT E had forgotten how beautiful it was, and stood amazed at the richness of its colour, imagining he had come upon a cave of the serpen- tine marble which is found on the coast ; for sides and roof and rugged floor were gorgeous with bands and spots and veins of green and rusty red. A nearer inspection, however, showed that these hues were not of the rock itself, but belonged to the garden of the ocean ; and when he turned to face the sea, lo! they had all but vanished, the cave shone silvery grey, with a faint moving sparkle, and out came the lovely carving of the rodent waves. All about, its sides were fretted in exquisite curves, and fantastic yet ever graceful knots and twists ; as if a mass of gnarled and contorted roots, first washed of every roughness by some ethereal solvent, leaving only the soft lines of yet grotesque volutions, had been trans- formed into mingled silver and stone. George Macdonald. IV NIGHT AND DAY Most weird and fantastic are these nightly visits to West Indian harbours. Above, the black mountain-depths, with their canopy of cloud, bright white against the purple night, hung with keen stars. The moon, it may be on her back in the west, sinking like a golden goblet behind some rock-fort, half shrouded in black trees. Below, a line of bright mist over a swamp, with the coco- palms standing up through it, dark, and yet glistering in the moon. . . . The echo of the gun from hill to hill. Wild voices from shore and sea. The snorting of the steamer, the rattling of the chain through the hawse-hole ; and on deck, and under the quarter, strange gleams of red light amid pitchy darkness, from engines, galley fires, Ian- thorns ; and black folk and white folk flitting restlessly across them. Charles Kingsley (from At Last). Night on a Steamer -o ^^i^ (From Essays of Travel) T T was a bleak and uncomfortable day ; but at night, by six bells, although the wind had not yet moderated, the clouds were all wrecked and blown away behind the rim of the horizon, and the stars came out thickly overhead. I saw Venus burning as steadily and sweetly across this hurly- burly of the winds and waters as ever at home upon the summer woods. The engine pounded, the screw tossed out of the water with a roar, and shook the ship from end to end ; the bows battled with loud reports against the billows ; and as I stood in the lee-scuppers and looked up to where the funnel leaned out, over my head, vomiting smoke, and the black and monstrous topsails blotted, at each lurch, a different crop of stars, it seemed as if all this trouble were a thing of small account, and that just above the mast reigned peace unbroken and eternal. R. L. Stevenson. 5» 52 THE CALL OF THE SEA Night in a Cornish Port -<^ -^^ (From Lying Prophets) T T NDER moonlight, the returning luggers crept homewards, like inky silhouettes on a back- ground of dull silver. Every moment added to the forest of masts anchored at the moorings out- side the harbour ; every minute another riding- light glimmered and another rowing-boat shot between the granite piers, to slide silently within the darkness under shore, as it left moonlit rings widening out behind at each dip of the oars. Joan sat down under the lighthouse and waited in the stillness for her father's boat. Yellow flashes, like fireflies, twinkled along through Newlyn, and above them the moon brought out square patches of silver-bright roof, seen through a blue night. Now and then a bell rang in the harbour, and lights leapt here and there mingling red snakes and streamers of fire with the white moonbeams where they lay on still water. Then Joan knew the fish were being sold by auction, and she grew anxious for her father's return, fearing that prices might have fallen before he arrived. Great periods of silence lay between the ringings of the bell, and at such times faint laughter and voices floated out from shore, blocks chipped and rattled as sails came down, a concertina squeaked fitfully where it was played on a Norwegian ice-boat at the ALPHONSE MARIK LOUIS LAMARTINE 53 harbour quay. The tide was coming in, and Joan watched many lights reflected in the har- bour, and wondered why the gold of them con- trasted so ill with the silver from the moon. Eden Phillpotts. Night oh the Mediterranean <2y -Qy (From Voyage en Orient) A U-DESSUS du corps sombre du batiraent, le nuage de toutes ses voiles dtait groupe pitto- resquement et pyramidait autour de ses mats. Ellas s'^levaient d'dtages en (5tages,de vergues en vergues, ddcoupees en mille formes bizarres, deroultfes en plis larges et profonds, semblables aux nombreuses et hautes tourelles d'un chateau gothique groupees autour du donjon ; elles n'avaient ni le mouvement ni la coulcur dclatante et dorde des voiles vues de loin sur les flots pendant le jour ; immobiles, ternes et teintes par la nuit d'un gris ardoisd, on eijt dit une volde de chauves-souris immenses, ou d'oiseaux inconnus des mers, abattus, presses, serrds les uns centre les autres sur un arbre gigantesque, et sus- pendus k son tronc ddpouilld, au clair de lunc d'une nuit d'hiver. L'ombre de ce nuagc de voiles dcsccndait d'en haul sur nous et nous ddrobait la moitic dc I'horizon. jamais plus colossalc et plus dtrange vision de la mer n'apparut k I'esprit 54 THE CALL OK THE SEA d'Ossian dans un songe. Toute la poesie des fiots etait Ik. La ligne bleue de I'horizon se confondait avec celle du ciel ; tout ce qui reposait dessus et dessous avaitl'apparenced'un seulfluideether^dans lequel nous nagions. Tout ce vague sans corps et sans limites augmentait I'efFet de cette apparition gigantesque de la fregate sur les flots, et jetait Tame avec I'oeil dans la meme illusion. II me semblait que la fregate, la pyramide aerienne de sa voilure et nous-memes, nous ^tions tous en- semble souleves, emport^s, comme des corps celestes dans les abimes liquides de I'dther, ne portant sur rien, planant par une force interieure sur le vide azure d'un univcrsel firmament. Alpho7tse Marie Louis Lamar tine. Dawn on the Iceland Banks ^c>- ''::^ (From Pkheur d'hlande) T LS avaient tous veillc la nuit d'avant et attrapd, en trente heures, plus de mille morues tres grosses ; aussi leurs bras forts ^taient las, et ils s'endormaient. Leurs corps veillait seul, et con- tinuait de lui-meme sa manoeuvre de peche, tandis que, par instants, leur esprit flottait en plein sommeil. Mais cet air du large qu'ils respiraient etait vierge comme aux premiers jours du mond, et si vivifiant que, malgrd leur fatigue, ils se sentaient PIERRE LOTI 55 la poitrine dilatce et les joues fraiches. La lumiere matinale, la lumiere vraie, avait fini par venir; comme au temps de la Genese elle s'etait separee d'avec les teiiebres qui semblaient s'etre tassees sur I'horuon, et restaient la en masses tres lourdes ; en y voyant si clair on s'apercevait bien \ present qu'on sortait de la nuit, — que cette lueur d'avant avait ^te vague et etrange comme celle des reves. Dans ce ciel tres couvert, tres epais, il y avait 9k et la des ddchirures, comme des percees dans un dome, par oil arrivaient de grands rayons couleur d'argent rose. Les nuages inferieurs dtaient dis- poses en une bande d'ombre intense, faisant tout le tour des eaux, emplissant les lointains d'indcci- sion et d'obscuritd. lis donnaient I'illusion d'un espace fermd, d'une limite ; ils ctaient comme des rideaux tirds sur I'infini, comme des voiles tendus pour cacher de trops gigantesques mysteres qui eussent trouble I'imagination des hommes. Ce matin -li, autour du petit assemblage de planches qui portait Yann et Sylvestre, Ic monde changeant du dehors avait pris un aspect de re- cueillement immense ; il s'dtait arrangd en sanctu- aire, et les gerbes de rayons, qui entraient par les trainees de cette voute de temple, s'allongaient en reflets sur I'eau immobile comme sur un parvis de marbrc. Et puis, peu il peu, on vit s'cclairer tres loin une autre chimere : une sortc de dccoupure 56 THE CALL OF THE SEA rosde tres haute, qui etait un promontoire de la sombre Islande. . . . Pierre Loti, Dawn in the Lighthouse ^o <:^ (From Many Inventions) C\^ the English south-coast Lights, that of St. Cecilia-under-the-Cliff is the most powerful, for it guards a very foggy coast. When the sea- mist veils all, St. Cecilia turns a hooded head to the sea and sings a song of two words once every minute. From the land that song resembles the bellowing of a brazen bull ; but off-shore they understand, and the steamers grunt gratefully in answer. Fenwick, who was on duty one night, lent me a pair of black glass spectacles, without which no man can look at the Light unblinded, and busied himself in last touches to the lenses before twi- light fell. The width of the English Channel beneath us lay as smooth and as many-coloured as the inside of an oyster shell. A little Sunder- land cargo-boat had made her signal to Lloyd's Agency, half a mile up the coast, and was lumber- ing down to the sunset, her wake lying white behind her. One star came out over the cliffs, the waters turned to lead colour, and St. Cecilia's Light shot out across the sea in eight long pencils that RUDYARD KlPUNG 57 wheeled slowly from right to left, melted into one beam of solid light laid down directly in front of the tower, dissolved again into eight, and passed away. The light-frame of the thousand lenses circled on its rollers, and the compressed-air engine that drove it hummed like a bluebottle under a glass. The hand of the indicator on the wall pulsed from mark to mark. Eight pulse- beats timed one half-revolution of the Light ; neither more nor less. . . . ..." Look," he answered, and I saw that the dead sea-mist had risen out of the lifeless sea and wrapped us while my back had been turned. The pencils of the Light marched staggeringly across tilted floors of white cloud. Prom the balcony round the light-room the white walls of the lighthouse ran down into swirling, smoking space. The noise of the tide coming in very lazily over the rocks was choked down to a thick drawl. . . . . . . Fenwick left his chair, passed to the Light, touched something that clicked, and the glare ceased with a suddenness that was pain. Day had come, and the Channel needed St. Cecilia no longer. The sea-fog rolled back from the cliffs in trailed wreaths and dragged patches, as the sun rose and made the dead sea alive and splendid. The stillness of the morning held us both silent as we stepped on the balcony. A 58 THE CALL OF THE SEA lark went up from the cliffs behind St. Cecilia, and we smelt a smell of cows in the lighthouse pastures below. Then we were both at liberty to thank the Lord for another day of clean and wholesome life. Rudyard Kipling. (From The Sands of Pleasure) JUST before dawn he went out again to the balcony, and watched the grey daylight filter and spread through the darkness. As it in- creased, the rays from the light fell shorter and fainter, helpless to prevail, for all their power, against the light that was coming. Out of the gloom rose the coasts and the land, and with the falling of the wind and the absence of its salt odours, the smell from the earth came off, rich and fragrant, in the morning air. The waves, un- fretted by the wind, rolled in deep and heavy, at first a dull grey, and then, as the light increased, a furrowed sea of deepest indigo. The eastern horizon was banked with clouds, above which the reflection of the hidden fires of dawn began to wash the sky with opalescent tints, and to kindle a glow of saffron on the crests of the breaking waves. Suddenly, behind him, Richard heard a click ; the glare ceased, and the roar of the ventilator died away. MORLEY ROBERTS 59 "Sunrise, sir," said the keeper, with his watch in his hand ; and together they looked eastward, where an edge of gold was eating into the banked clouds on the horizon. Filson Young. Dawn on a Cargo Boat -vi.^ -^^ (From A Tramp's Notebook) ■pUT that's the dawn ! Morning, and the glory of it, the grey wash of Eternity ; sea-grey and world-grey and sky- grey, all in one great wash with a little whiteness standing for daylight. Beyond the illimitable wash where the sea breaks against the sky is the sun ; source of all, strength of all. And there is no sleep to wash out of our eyes before we catch up strength from it, and encouragement. Lately we might have raised the Ajax cry, " In the light, in the light, destroy us " ; but now we see the little sea-plant of grey-green grow in the east, and we are strong. There is light, or a blight, a grey- ness out ahead, and the deck whitens all awash, and the "old man" shivers in his oilskin coat as he hangs on to a pin in the rail to watch us. The poop is wet and gleaming, wet with the spray of following seas, and, as our .ship rolls, the swash of shipped seas hisses, and her cleanness is as the cleanness of something newly varnished. Once 6o THE CALL OF THE SEA and again as she rolls (the wind now quartering) the scuppers spout geyser-like and gurgle. . . . The light leapt from crest to crest, and a little pale yellow blossom of blown dawn peeped out of the grey. Like a touch of fire it reanimated our washed and reeling world ; we laughed as we dropped down after our three hours' battle with the demons of the air. It was morning. . . . Morley Roberts. V WEATHER The whole of the luggage was carelessly thrown to- gether, and among which were the poor suffering pas- sengers, many of them ladies, rolling in sickness and everything that was filthy, with the risk of having their brains beat out. Our getting into the boat which came alongside was so far bad that we thought it miraculous that only two passengers fell overboard. All our cam- paigning was a joke, for the time it lasted, to these four hours and a half. Colonel Peter Hawker (from his Diary). I. CALM Calm on the Mediterranean "^i^. -Oy (From Voyage en Orient) T E vent est mort et lien n'annonce son retour. La surface du golfe n'a pas un pli ; la mer est si plane qu'on y distingue gk et Ik I'impression des ailes transparentes des moustiques qui flottent sur ce miroir, et qui seules le ternissent a cette heure. Voila done k quel degrd de calme et de mansugtude pent descendre cet dl^ment qui soul^ve les vais- seaux k trois ponts sans connaitre leur poids, qui ronge des lieues de rivage, use des coUines et fend les rochers, brise les mont.agnes sous le choc de ses lames mugissantes ! Rien n'est si doux que ce qui est fort. . . . . . . Un calme absolu nous a surpris k douze lieues en mcr; il dure encore. Aucun vent dans le ciel, si ce n'est quelques brises perdues qui vien- nent de temps en temps froisser les voiles des deux vaisseaux ; dies font rendre a ces grandes voiles une palpitation sonore, un battement ir- regulier semblablc au battement convulsif des ailes d'un oiseau qui meurt ; la nicr est plane et polie coinme la lame d'un sabre ; pas une ride, mais, de loin en loin, de larges ondulations cylindriques qui se glissent sous le navire et 63 64 THE CALL OF THE SEA I'dbranlent comme un tremblement souterrain. Toute la masse des mats, des vergues, des hau- bans, des voiles, craque et frdmit alors, ainsi que sous un vent trop lourd. . . . ... La mer, a mon rdveil, apres une nuit ora- geuse, semble jouer avec le reste du vent d'hiver ; I'dcume la couvre encore comme les flocons k demi essuyds qui tachent les flancs du cheval fatigud d'une longue course, ou comme ceux que son mors secoue quand il abaisse et releve la tete, impatient d'une nouvelle carriere. Les vagues courent vite, irregulierement, mais Idgeres, peu profondes, trans- parentes ; cette mer ressemble ii un champ de belle avoine ondoyant aux brises d'une matintfe de printemps apres une nuit d'averse. . . . Alphonse Marie Louis Lamar tine. The Mystery of a Calm ^;:iy <:i>. (From A Sack of Shakings) T T OW shall I speak of the voice of the calm ? How describe that sound which mortal ear cannot hear? The pen of the inspired writers alone might successfully undertake such a task, so closely in touch as they were \vith the Master Mind. "When the morning stars sang together, and all the Sons of God shouted for joy." Some- thing akin to this sublime daring of language is F. T. BULLEN 65 needed to convey a just idea of what floods the soul when alone upon the face of the deep in a perfect calm. The scale of that heavenly harmony is out of our range. We can only by some subtle alchemy of the brain distil from that celestial silence the voices of angels and archangels and all the glorious company of heaven. Between us and them is but a step, but it is the threshold of the timeless dimension. Again and again I have seen men, racked through and through with a very agony of delight, dash aside the thralls that held them, sometimes with passionate tears, more often with raging words that grated harshly upon the velvet stillness. They felt the burden of the flesh grievous, since it shut them out from what they dimly felt must be bliss unutterable, not to be con- tained in any earthen vessel. On land a thousand things, even in a desert, distract the attention, loose the mind's tension even when utterly alone. But at sea, the centre of one vast glassy circle, shut in on every hand by a perfect demi-globc as flawless as the mirror whereon you float, with even the softest undulation imperceptible, and no more motion of the atmosphere than there is in a perfect vacuum, there is absolutely nothing to come between the Soul of Man and the Infinite Silences of Creation. There and there only is it possible to realize what underlies that mighty line, •'There was silence in Heaven for the space of F 66 THE CALL OF THE SEA half an hour." F'ew indeed are the men, however rough and unthinking, that are not quieted and impressed by the marvel of a perfect calm. But the tension is too great to be borne long with patience. Men feel that this majestic environ- ment is too redolent of the coming paradise to be supportable by flesh and blood. They long with in- tense desire for a breeze, for motion, for a change of any sort. So much so that long-continued calm is dreaded by seamen more than any other phase of sea-experience. And yet it is for a time lovely beyond description, soothing the jarring nerves and solemnizing every faculty as if one were to be shut in before the Shekinah in the Holy of Holies. It is like the Peace of God. F. T. Bullen. Calm off the Horn ^cy --o ^i^ (From A Tarpaulin Muster) /^FF Cape Horn there are but two kinds of ^-"^ weather, neither one of them a pleasant kind. If you get the fine kind, it is dead calm, without enough wind to lift the wind vane. The sea lies oily and horrible, heaving in slow, solemn swells, the colour of soup. The sky closes down upon the sea all round you, the same colour as the water. The sun never shines over those seas, though sometimes there is a red flush, in the east JOHN MASEFIELD 67 or in the west, to hint that somewhere, very far away, there is daylight brightening the face of things. If you are in a ship in the Cape Horn calm, you forge ahead, under all sail, a quarter of a mile an hour. The swell heaves you up and drops you, in long, slow, gradual movements, in a rhythm beautiful to mark. You roll, too, in a sort of horrible crescendo, half a dozen rolls and a lull. You can never tell when she will begin to roll. She will begin quite suddenly, for no apparent reason. She will go over and over with a rattling clatter of blocks and chains. Then she will swing back, groaning along the length of her, to slat the great sails and set the reef points flogging, to a great clack and jangle of staysail sheets. Then over she will go again, and back, and again over, rolling further each time. At the last of her rolls there comes a great clattering of tins, as the galley gear and whack pots slither across to leeward, followed by cursing seamen. The iron swing-pots bang to and fro. The straining and groaning sounds along her length. Every block aloft clacks and whines. The sea splashes up the scuppers. The sleepers curse her from their bunks for a drunken drogher. Then she lets u|) and stands on her dignity, and rolls no more for perhaps another quarter of an hour. fohn MasefieliL 68 THE CALL OF THE SEA II. CHANGE OF WEATHER In the South Seas -^cy o ^o (From Matelot) 1\ /r AIS un soir, une immense nude obscure surgit k I'horizon du sud, envahissante, formant tout de suite voute de tdnebres. Et le bon vent tomba, et, dans I'air subitement refroidi, deux grands albatros, les premiers, apparurent, betes de I'Austral sombre. Dans la lumi^re di- minude, dans I'humiditd pdndtrante qu'on sentait descendre comme un manteau glacd sur les dpaules, c'dtait sinistre de s'enfoncer, k une tombde de nuit, dans ces regions incertaines que recouvrait ce voile de nuages et ou les pires sur- prises du temps dtaient k redouter, Le lendemain, tout avait changd d'aspect k bord de la Saone que le soleil n'dclairait plus. Au lieu des chapeaux de paille, au lieu des gais costumes en toile propre et blanche, on voyait reparaitre les laines bleues, raphes, fandes, trouees de mites et de cancrelas, et les vieux bonnets de fatigue enfoncds plus bas que les oreilles. Et, sur le pont, c'dtait une agitation extraordinaire parmi les manoeuvriers. De solides voiles toutes neuves arrivaient d'en bas, apportdes k I'dpaule par des rangdes d'hommes, en longs corteges oscillantes. PIERRE LOTI 69 Des filins de couleur blonde, neufs aussi et sentant le goudron, sortaient des cales ; les matelots s'at- telaient dessus, puis prenaient leur course et les tiraient, vite, vite, comme des serpents sans fin. Tout ccla se faisait en musique et, dans I'air devenu ipre, salubre aux poitrines vigoureuses mais mortel aux affaiblis, les sifflets d'argent con- stamment roulaient leurs trilles suraigus. On se prdparait h la lutte prochaine contre le vent et contra la mer des zones mauvaises. lis tour- noyaient, les albatros, tres rapproch^s — les memes qu'hier, acharnds peut-etre pour des semaines k suivre le sillage du navire, — et ils criaient sans treve de leur vilaine voix gdmissante, qui semble le grincement d'une girouette ou d'une poulie rouillde. Et le quartier-maitre de I'arricre, outrd de toujours les entendre, leur disait, son sifflet serrd entre les dents et leur montrant le poing : — " Tu ferais pas mal de graisser un peu ta poulie, toi, les deux grands sales moineaux, la-bas ! " Le fait est qu'ils avaient I'air de chanter h. la mort, ces deux albatros. Pierre Loti. 70 THE CALL OF THE SEA III. FOG The Walls of Grey -^o (From Rare Adventures) npHE sorrowful Maister, seeing nothing but shipwrack tooke the Ilelme in hand, directing his course to rush upon the face of a low Rocke, whereupon the sea most fearefully broke. As wc touched the Mariners contending who should first leape out, some fell over-boord, and those that got land were pulled backe by the reciprocating waves : Neither in all this time durst I once move ; for they had formerly sworne, if I pressed to escape, before the rest were first forth, they would tluow me headlong into the sea : So being two wayes in danger of death, I patiently offered up my prayers to God. At our first encounter with the Rocks, (our fore- decks, and Boates gallery being broke, and a 72 THE CALL OF THE SEA great Lake made) the recoiling waves brought us backe from the Shelfes a great way ; which the poore Master perceiving, and that there were seven men drowned, and eleven persons alive, cryed with a loud voyce : Be of good courage, take up oares, and row hastily ; it may be, before the Barke sinke, we shall attaine to yonder Cave, which then appeared to our sight : Every man working for his owne deliverance (as it pleased God) we got the same with good fortune : for no sooner were we disbarked, and I also left the last man, but the Boat immediately sunke. There was nothing saved but my Coffino, which I kept alwaies in my amies. William Liihjrow. 'A' The Fires of St. Elmo -' that all were obliged to seek safety. The ships received the squall, heeling over on their sides, while the sea rose, seeming to intend to engulph them. The lightning, which traversed the air, seemed to leave the heavens torn. It was a great tempest, with many and very great peals of thunder. Three thunderbolts fell, which caused no small confusion ; while the water did not cease to fall from the heavens, with dark and thick rain, combined with squalls of wind, from which the least harm that could be hoped for was to tear out the masts. They lighted lanterns in the castles to show to the other ships. But terrified voices continued to be heard from the sailors, with cries of "Keep clear! Luff! Keep away I " fearing that there would be collisions. All was hurry, confusion, and trouble, for it was a fearful night, and liie end uncertain. Some cried, " Make sail ! " others, " Sound the well ! " We were ready to cut away the masts, and had up the axes. In short, all was tribulation and anxiety, chiefly because there was no certainty whether there was any safety where the ships were. The Father Commissary, with a cross In his hands, stood until the weather cleared, offering up prayers. Then, as the sailors call it, St. Elmo appeared, whom they saluted three limes with great devotion. At length the night came to an end, 74 THE CALL OF THE SEA which, owing to the horror and confusion, appeared very long ; but they were saved (after God), owing to the strength and soundness of the ships. Pedro Fernandes de Qiiiros. The Fury of It 'Qy 'vi>- ^Ci.. (From \h& Journal ; trans.) "VTEVER before have I seen the sea so high, so horrible, so covered with foam. The wind prevented our advance, even as far as some shel- tering headland, and kept me out on this sea, which seemed suffused with blood and boiled like a cauldron on a great fire. Never before had the sky looked so terrible. Day and night it blazed like a furnace, sending out such streaks of fire that every moment I looked to see the masts carried away. The thunderbolts fell around with such inconceivable fury that we all thought the vessel must be struck. All this time the rain fell without ceasing : not mere rain indeed, but truly another deluge. Christopher Columbus. FRANCOIS RABELAIS 75 Scylla and Charybdis ^c:^ ^i.- (From The Fifth Book of the Good Pantagniel ; trans.) 'T'HEN the gusts increased, and by fits blowed all at once from several quarters : yet we neither settled nor braded up close our sails, but only let fly the sheets, not to go against the master of the ship's direction ; and thus having let go amain, lest we should spend our topsails, or the ship's quick-side should lie in the water, and she be overset, we lay by and run adrift, that is, in a landloper's phrase, we temporised it. For he assured us, that, as these gusts and whirlwinds would not do us much good, so they could not do us much harm, considering their easiness and pleasant strife, as also tlie clearness of tlie sky, and calmness of the current. So tliat we were to observe the philosopher's rule, bear and forbear ; that is, trim, or go according to the time. However, these whirlwinds and gusts lasted so long, that wc persuaded the master to let us go and lie at trie with our main course ; that is, to haul the tack aboard, the sheet close aft, tlie bow- line set up, and the helm tied close aboard ; so after a stormy gale of wind, we broke through the whirlwind. But 'twas like falling into Scylla to avoid Cliaryljdis (out of the frying-jian into the fire). For we had not sailed a league, e'er our 76 THE CALL OF THE SEA ships were stranded upon some sands, such as are the flats of St. Maixant. Francois Rabelais. Collision between the Erebus and Terror (From A Voyage of Discovery) LARGE berg was seen ahead, and quite A close to us ; the ship was immediately hauled to the wind on the port tack, with the expectation of being able to weather it ; but just at this moment the Terror was observed running down upon us, under her topsails and foresail ; and as it was impossible for her to clear both the berg and the Erebics^ collision was inevitable. We in- stantly hove all aback to diminish the violence of the shock ; but the concussion when she struck us was such as to throw almost every one off his feet ; our bowsprit, fore-topmast, and other smaller spars, were carried away ; and the ships hanging together, entangled by their rigging, and dashing against each other with fearful violence, were falling down upon the weather face of the lofty berg under our lee, against which the waves were breaking and foaming to near the summit of its perpendicular cliffs. Sometimes she rose high above us, almost exposing her keel to view, and again descended as we in our turn rose to the top SIR JAMES ROSS 77 of the wave, threatening to bury her beneath us, whilst the crashing of the breaking upperworks and boats increased the horror of the scene. Pro- videntially they gradually forged past each other, and separated before we drifted down amongst the foaming breakers, and we had the gratifica- tion of seeing her clear the end of the berg, and of feeling that she was safe. But she left us com- pletely disabled ; the wreck of the spars so en- cumbered the lower yards, that we were unable to make sail, so as to get headway on the ship ; nor had we room to wear round, being by this time so close to the berg that the waves, when they struck against it, threw back their sprays into the ship. The only way left us to extricate ourselves from this awful and appalling situation was by resorting to the hazardous expedient of a stern-board, which nothing could justify during such a gale and with so high a sea running, but to avert the danger which every moment threat- ened us of being dashed to pieces. The heavy rolling of the vessel, and the probability of the masts giving way each time the lower yard-arms struck against the cliffs, which were towering high above our mastheads, rendered it a service of ex- treme danger to loose the mainsail ; Inil no sooner was the order given, than the (hiring sjjirit of the British seaman manifested itself— the men ran up the rigging with as much alacrity as on any 78 THE CALL OF THE SEA ordinary occasion ; and although more than once driven oflf the yard, they after a short time suc- ceeded in loosing the sail. Amidst the roar of the wind and sea, it was difficult both to hear and to execute the orders that were given, so that it vi^as three-quarters of an hour before we could get the yards braced bye, and the maintack hauled on board sharp aback — an expedient that perhaps had never before been resorted to by seamen in such weather ; but it had the desired effect ; the ship gathered stern-way, plunging her stern into the sea, washing away the gig and quarter boats, and with her lower yardarms scraping the rugged face of the berg, we in a few minutes reached its western termination ; the "under tow," as it is called, or the reaction of the water from its vertical cliffs, alone preventing us being driven to atoms against it. Sir James Ross. A Landsman in a Storm -n:> -^^y (From A Narrative of a Voyage Round the World ; trans. ) At Sea, ill latitude 4° North. A GRAY cloud, the forerunner of a storm, appears on the horizon ; it rises rapidly, charged with hail, spreads itself out afar, covers great part of the sky, darkens the atmosphere, and J. ARAGO 79 diffuses a sulphureous smell. A dull, hollow roar- ing soon announces to the attentive mariner the impending danger. . . . The merry songs have ceased, and are succeeded by an alarming silence. The danger is measured with a glance. The cap- tain speaks ; the men fly to obey his orders. The furled sails no longer catch the wind, which roars and howls among the rigging : the ship gradually yields to the rapid motion of the billows. Perched on the tops of the masts, and at the extremities of the yards, the sailors display redoubled boldness. An order is scarcely given before it is executed. They are no longer those faint-hearted cowards, described by barbarous historians as trembling at the approach of danger ; they are, on the con- trary, intrepid mariners, whom the combined elements are incapable of appalling. Whether touching the clouds, or at the bottom of the abyss, they are constantly the same ; and they care as little for the thunderbolt as for the sunken rock. But the uproar increases ; the cloud hovers over the vessel ; wave dashes against wave ; lightnings rend the cloud ; from its murky sides burst tor- rents of wind and hail. The ship is carried away. The rapidity of its motions prevents any attempt to counteract them ; and the profoundest darkness would render such an attempt useless. The roar- ing of the waves, the pealing of the thunder, the howling of the cordage, the cracking of the tackle, So THE CALL OF THE SEA drown the voice : none is heard save that of the tempest. But the wind subsides ; light returns ; the thun- der rolls at a distance ; the ear calmly follows its reverberations ; the seaman with weary hand points to the flashing lightning, now too distant to alarm him ; he forgets in a trice the dangers he has just escaped, and seems by his renewed songs to pro- voke fresh perils. I know not, my friend, whether I have given you a faint idea of a storm which overtook us to- day in the fourth degree of north latitude. Ah I what a delightful picture of Paris could I have drawn for you ! Our gentry, however, say that it was only a squall. J. Arago. Helplessness of the Ship ^;i.- <:> (From Fccheur d^Islande) "TJ'LLE fuyait devant le temps, la Marie^ fuyait toujours plus vite ; et le temps fuyait aussi — devant je ne sais quoi de mystdrieux et de terrible. La brise, la mer, la Marie, les nuages, tout dtait pris d'un mcme affolement de fuite et de vitesse dans le meme sens. Ce qui detalait le plus vite c'dtait le vent, puis les grosses levdes de houle, plus lourdes, plus lentes, courant apres lui ; puis la Marie entrainde dans ce mouvement de tout. Les PIERRE LOTI 8 1 lames la poursuivaient, avec leurs cretes blcmes qui se roulaient dans une perpdtuclle chute, et elle, — toujours rattrapde, toujours ddpassde, — leur dchappait tout de mcme, au moyen d'un sillage habile qu'elle se faisait derriere, d'un remous ou leur fureur se brisait. Et dans cette allure de fuite, cc qu'on dprouvait surtout, c'dtait une illusion de Idg^retd ; sans aucune peine ni effort, on se sentait bondir. Quand la Marie montait sur ces lames, c'dtait sans secousse, comme si le vent I'eut enlevde ; et sa redescente apres dtait comme une glissade, faisant dprouver ce trcssaillement du ventre qu'on a dans les chutes simuldes des "chars russes" ou dans celles imaginaircs des reves. Elle glissait comme h. reculons, la montagnc fuyante se ddrobant sous elle pour continuer de courir, et alors elle dtait replongde dans un de ces grands crcux qui couraient aussi ; sans se meurlrir, elle en louchait le fond horrible, dans un dclaboussement d'eau qui ne la mouillait mcme pas, mais qui fuyait comme tout le reste ; qui fuyait et s'dvanouissait en avant comme de la fumde, comme rien. . . . Au fond de ces creux, il faisait plus noir, et apr^s chaque lame passde, on rcgardait dcrricire soi arriver I'aulrc ; i'autre encore plus grande, qui se dressait toutc vcrte par transparence ; qui se ddpcchait d'approchcr, avec des conlournements P 82 THE CALL OF THE SEA fuiieux, des volutes prctes k se renfermer, un air de dire: "Attends que je t'attrape, et je t'engouffre. . . ." Pierre Loti. An Emigrant Ship in Bad Weather ^::> (From Blau IVasser) "piN eigenthiimlich schriller Laut pfiff da iiber die See und das Schiff neigte sich so plotzlich und scharf nach Lee hiniiber, dass, wer nicht fest stand, zur Seite rutschte und rollte und alles an Deck stehende lockere Geschirr und Gerath pol- ternd nach Larbord iiber kollerte. " Steht bei den Fallen I Los mit den Bram- fallen, um Euer Leben, los mit den Marsen ! " schrie in diesem Augenblick die Stimme des Kapitiins gellend iiber Deck. Die Matrosen sprangen erschreckt herbei, aber sie selber hatten Noth, sich im ersten Augenbhck der Ueberras- chung festzuklammem und nicht ebenfalls nach Lee zu geworfen zu werden, und ehe sie nur die Falle, an denen die oberen Raaen befestigt waren, erreichen und, wie der Befehl lautete, abwerfen konnten, brach es und knatterte es oben in den Stengen und kam, unter dem Heulen der plotz- lich aufgesprungenen Bo, rasselnd an Deck nieder, zwischen die angstlich aufschreienden Passagiere hinein, FRIEDRICH GERSTAECKER 83 Noch standen die unteren .Masten, und durch die niedergeschmetterten Stengcn hatte der so plotzlich herangebrauste Sturm wenigstens seine grosste Macht auf das Schiff verloren, das sicli langsam wiedcr aufiichtete. Aber die Kaptaube trieb auch, ein halbes Wrack, auf den Wellen, und unter dem P'lattern der Segel, da der Mann am Steuer in plotzlichem Schreck das Schiff gerade in den Wind hinein gedreht hatte, dass es nicht den mindcsten Fortgang mehr durch's Wasser machte, sprangen die Matrosen jetzt an ihre Platze, losten die Schoten des grossen Segels und der Fock, liessen die Cliivcr nieder — der Cliiverbaum war ebenfalls abgebrochen — und warfcn das Besan- segcl los. In furchtbarer Schnclle hatte sich indessen die im Westen aufgekommene Wand gehoben ; von der Windsbraut getragen kam sie herauf, und wie die Leutc nah dabci waren, das indessen wieder seinem Steuer gehorchendc Schiff von allcm frci zu kappen, was darum herhing; an Deck zu ziehen was zu retten war, und das Uebrige iiber Bord zu schneiden, kam ein fluthendcr Regen wolken- bruchartig niedergcstrumt, sammeltc sich an Deck und schlug, da er so rasch gar nicht durch die jetzt noch iiberdies mit Segel und Tauwerk ver- stopftcn Speygaten ablaufcn konnle, in die noch offcncn Luken hinein. 84 THE CALL OF THE SEA Die Passagiere hatten den ersten Anprall des Sturmes mit dumpfem, starreni Schweigen hinge- nommen. So plotzlich war das Unwetter aus volkomnien heiterer Luft iiber sie hereingebrochen, so wild und toll schlugen ihnen die Stengen und Segel dazu urn die Kopfe, dass sie die Grosse des Unfalls nicht einmal gleich begriffen. Nur die Frauen bemachtigten sich instinctartig zuerst der Kinder, diese vor dem fallenden Holzern, wenn es sein musste, mit den eigenen Korpern zu decken, gewannen aber auch zuerst ihre Stimmen wieder und schrien und wehklagten jetze in das Hculen und Brausen der Elemente hinein. Hatten die Seeleute iibrigens die Passagiere, die ihnen mehr als je iiberall im Wege waren, noch bis jetzt unbelastigt an Deck gelassen, so war das die alleinige Ursache gewesen, dass sie auch noch nicht einen Augenblick Zeit bekommen, sich mit ihnen zu beschaftigen. Jetzt aber, wo der nieder- stromende, Regen seine Huth selbst auch in die noch offenen Luken des Zwischendecks ergoss, und die darunter liegende Fracht zu beschadigen drohte, anderte sich die Sache, und die Passagiere wurden beordert nieder zu klettern, damit die Luken geschlossen werden konnten. Unter dem Schreien und Jammern der Frauen und Kinder und dem Fluchen der Manner, die MICHAEL SCOTT 85 sich grosstentheils nur ungern clem Befehle fiigten, wurde das endlich bewerkstelligt, und die iiberge- hobenen Lukcn deckten wenige Minuten spiiter den unteren, dunklen, dumpfigen Raum des Zwischendecks mit Nacht und Schweigen. Die Mannschaft an Deck bekam freien Raum, das zerrissene Takelwerk, wie die zersplitterten Masten, so viel als moglich in Ordnung zu bringen, das Schiff wenigstens regieren zu konnen, und als das geschehen war, andcrte der Kapitiin ihrcn Cours. Mit den wenigen noch moglichen Segeln konnten sie sich aber nur langsam durch die rasch erregte Fluth fortbewegen, und das Sicherste fiir sie war, nach Norden hinauf zu laufen, um mit Hiilfe der Leuchtthiirme einen schiitzendcn Hafen zu errei- chen, wo der erlittene Schaden wieder ordentlich reparirt werden konnte. Mit dem Wrack durfte er nicht wagen, seine Reisc durch den atlantischen Ocean fortzusetzen. Fricdrich Gersiaecker. The Breaking Wave <:> <::> -oy (From The Cruise of the *' MiJi^e") 'X* i I E weather was indeed getting rapidly worse ; the screaming sea-birds flew in like drifts of snow, scarcely distinguishable from tlic driving foamflakcs ; the scud came i)ast in soaking wreaths like flashes of white vapour from the safety-valve 86 THE CALL OF THE SEA of a Steam-boiler. Suddenly the wind fell to a dead calm ; not a breath fanned us ; not a leaf stirred ; the rain-drops glittered on the pale-green velvet of the ragged and ever-twittering but now motionless leaves of the plantain, like silver globules frozen there ; the reports of the guns grew sharper in the lull, the cries shriller, and the general tumult and uproar of the conflict swelled fearfully; while the white smoke rose up, shrouding the vessels and entire cove from my sight. The clouds above us, surcharged with fire and water, formed a leaden-coloured arch over the entrance to the cove that spanned the uproar of dark white-crested waves, boiling and rolling in smoky wreaths and lancing out ragged shreds from their lower edges, that shot down and shortened like a fringe of streamers, from which the forked lightning " crankled " out every now and then clear and bright. A column of dense black smoke, thickly starred with red sparks, now boiled up past the edge of the cliff under me ; presently it became streaked with tongues of bright hissing flame, which ran up the rigging, diverging along every rope as if it had been a galvanic wire, twisting serpent-like round the Mosca!s masts and higher spars, and licking the wet furled sails like boa-constrictors fitting their prey to be devoured. See how the fire insinuates itself into the dry creases of the canvas, driving MICHAEL SCOTT 87 out the moisture from the massive folds in white steam ; now the sails catch in earnest— they drop in glowing flakes of tinder from the yards— there the blue - and - white pennant and ensign are scorched away, and blown off in tiny flashes ; while in the lulls of the gale we distinctly hear the roaring and crackling of the fire as it rages in the hull of the doomed vessel below. " I say, Quacco, mind we don't get a hoist, my man— see we be not too near— there ! Don't you hear how the guns go off as the metal gets heated, for there is not a soul on board ? " It never rains but it pours. " Hark ! An earth- quake ! " And as if a volcano had burst forth beneath our feet, at this instant of time the pirate schooner under the cliff blew up with an explosion that shook earth, air, and water — shooting the pieces of burning wreck in every direction, that hissed like meteors through the storm, and fell thickly all around us. " The Midge / the Midge / she slides out of the smoke I See I She gains the ofifing ! " But the avenger of blood is behind ; for the Spider had now cleared the harbour's mouth and was in hot pursuit. The felucca with her sails — a whole constellation of shot-holes in them— double- reefed, tearing and plunging through it ; her sharp stem flashing up the water into smoke in a vain attempt to weather the sandy point. 88 THE CALL OF THE SEA "Won't do, my boy ! You cannot, carry to it as you will, clear the land as you are standing ; you must tack soon, unless you mean to jump the little beauty over it." As I spoke she hove about and stood across the schooner, exchanging broadsides gallantly. " Well done, little one ! " The Spider tacked also and stood after her. A gun ! Another! Both replied to by the felucca, the musketry peppering away all the while from each essel ; the tiny white puffs instantly obliterated y the foam-drift ; and now neither fired a shot. The gale at this moment came down in thunder ; all above as black as night, all below as white as wool. The Spider shortens sail just in time ; the Midge not a pistol shot ahead on the weather bow. See ! the squall strikes her — her tall lateen sail shines through the more than twilight darkness and the driving rain and spray, like a sea-bird's wing. Mercy ! how she lies over I She sinks in the trough of the sea ! Now she rises again and breasts it gallantly ! There ! that's over her bodily ; her sails are dark and sea-washed three- parts up. Look how the clear green water, as she lurches, pours out of the afterleech of the sail like a cascade ! Now she is buried again ; no — buoyant as a cork, she dances over it like a wild duck ! See how she tips up her round stern and slides down the liquid hollow ! Once more she catches the breeze on the opposite rise of the sea. F. T. BULLEN 89 her sails tearing her along up the watery acclivity as if they would drag the spars out of her. Now she rushes on the curl of the wave, with her bows and a third of her keel hove out into the air, as if she were going to shoot across like a flying-fish into the swelling bosom of the next sea. Once more she is hove on her beam-ends and hid by an intervening billow. Ha ! what a blinding flash, as the blue forked lightning glances from sky to sea right over where I saw her last ! Hark ! the split- ting crash and stunning reverberations of the shaking thunder, rolling through the empyrean loud as an archangel's voice, until earth and air tremble again. She rights— she rights ! There ! the narrow shred of white canvas gleams again through the mist in the very fiercest of the squall — yes, there / No ! God of my fathers ! IT IS BUT A BREAKING WAVE I Michael Scott, Responsibility of the Helmsman <:i^ (From The Cruise of the ''Cachalot'') VT'OU are running before the wind and waves, sometimes deep in the valley between two liquid mountains, sometimes high on the rolling ridge of one. You watch anxiously the speed of the sea, trying to decide whether it or you are go THE CALL OF THE SEA going the faster, when suddenly there seems to be a hush, almost a lull, in the uproar. You look astern and see a wall of water rising majestically higher and higher, at the same time drawing nearer and nearer. Instinctively you clutch at something firm and hold your breath. Then that mighty green barrier leans forward, the ship's stern seems to settle at the same time, and, with a thundering noise as of an avalanche descending, it overwhelms you. Of course, the ship's way is deadened ; she seems like a living thing over- burdened, yet struggling to be free ; and well it is for all hands if the helmsman be able to keep his post and his wits about him. For if he be hurt, or have fled from the terrible wave, it is an even chance that she "broaches to," that is to say, swings round broadside on to the next great wave that follows relentlessly its predecessor. Then, helpless and vulnerable, she will most probably be smashed up and founder. Many a good ship has gone with all hands to the bottom just as simply as that. p Y. Btillen. The Fleet in a Squall 'C^ <:> (From Roderick Random) "l^rE got out of the channel with a prosperous breeze, which died away, leaving us becalmed about fifty leagues to the westward of the Lizard ; TOBIAS SMOLLETT 9I but this State of inaction did not last long, for next night our maintop-sail was split by the wind, which, in the morning, increased to a hurricane. I was awakened by a most horrible din, occasioned by the play of the gun-carriages upon the decks above, the cracking of cabins, the howling of the wind through the shrouds, the confused noise of the ship's crew, the pipes of the boatswain and his mate, the trumpets of the lieutenants, and the clanking of the chain pumps. Morgan, who had never been at sea before, turned out in a great hurry, crying, " Cot have mercy and compassion upon us ! I believe we have cot upon the confines of Lucifer and the d — n'd I " while poor Thompson lay quaking in his hammock, putting up petitions to heaven for our safety. I rose and joined the Welshman, with whom (after having fortified our- selves with brandy) I went above ; but if my sense of hearing was startled before, how must my sight have been appalled in beholding the effects of the storm ! The sea was swelled into billows moun- tain high, on the top of which our ship sometimes hung as if it were about to be precipitated to the abyss below 1 Sometimes we sank between two waves that rose on each side higher than our top- mast-head, and threatened by dashing together to overwhelm us in a moment ! Of all our fleet, con- sisting of a hundred and fifty sail, scarce twelve appeared, and these driving under their bare poles, 92 THE CALL OF THE SEA at the mercy of the tempest. At length the mast of one of them gave way, and tumbled overboard with a hideous crash ! Nor was the prospect in our own ship much more agreeable : a number of officers and sailors ran backward and forward with distraction in their looks, halloaing to one another, and undetermined what they should attend to first. Some clung to the yards, endeavouring to unbend the sails that were split into a thousand pieces flapping in the wind ; others tried to furl those which were yet whole, while the masts, at every pitch, bent and quivered like twigs, as if they would have shivered into innumerable splinters ! Tobias Sinollett. The Slave Ship -oy <:i^ -<;> (From Modern Painters) T)UT I think the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the Slave Ship, the chief Academy picture of the Exhibition of 1840. It is a sunset on the Atlantic, after prolonged storm ; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and stream- ing rain-clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of the sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low broad heaving of the whole ocean, JOHN RUSKIN 93 like the lifting of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm. Between these two ridges the fire of the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense and lurid splendour of which burns like gold, and bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves, by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided, lift them- selves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under strength of the swell compels or permits them, leaving between them treacherous spaces of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with the undistinguish- able images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flying. Purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty ship as it labours amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in tliat fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and mixes its 94 THE CALL OF THE SEA flaring flood with the sunlight, and, cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarna- dines the multitudinous sea. John Riiskin. Lightning at Sea '<::^ <;:> ^;:> (From Mr. Midshipman Easy) A ND the Aurora flew before the gale, under ■^^ her foresail and topsails close reefed. The weather was now so thick that nothing could be observed twenty yards from the vessels ; the thunder peeled, and the lightning' darted in every direction over the dark expanse. The watch was called as soon as the sails were trimmed, and all who could went below, wet, uncomfortable, and disappointed. . . . At this moment a tremendous noise was heard above, a shock was felt throughout the whole ship, which trembled fore and aft as if it was about to fall into pieces ; loud shrieks were followed by plaintive cries, the lower deck was filled with smoke, and the frigate was down on her beam- ends. Without exchanging a word, the whole of the occupants of the berth flew out, and were up the hatchway, not knowing what to think, but con- vinced that some dreadful accident had taken place. On their gaining the deck, it was at once ex- W. CLARK RUSSELL 95 plained ; the foremast of the fiiyate had been struck by hghtning, had been riven into several pieces, and had fallen over the larboard bow, carrying with it the main topmast and jib-boom. The jagged stump of the foremast was in flames, and burnt brightly, notwithstanding the rain fell in torrents. The ship, as soon as the foremast and main topmast had gone overboard, broached- to furiously, throwing the men over the wheel and dashing them senseless against the carronades ; the forecastle, the forepart of the main deck, and even the lower deck, were spread with men, either killed or seriously wounded, or insensible from the electric shock. The frigate was on her beam-ends, and the sea broke furiously over her ; all was dark as pitch, except the light from the blazing stump of the foremast, appearing like a torch, held up by the wild demons of the storm, or when occasionally the gleaming lightning cast a momentary glare, threatening every moment to repeat its attack upon the vessel, while the deafening thunder burst almost on their devoted heads. Captain F. Marryat. (From The Wreck of the *' Grosvenor") T LEFT the wheel for a second or two to close one of the skylights, and, as I did so, a flash of lightning seemed to set the ship on fire, and imme- g6 THE CALL OF THE SEA diately came a deafening crash of thunder. I think there is something more awful in the roar of thunder heard at sea than on shore, unless you are among mountains ; you get the full intensity of it, the mighty outburst smiting the smooth surface of the water, which in itself is a wonderful vehicle of sound, and running onwards for leagues with- out meeting with any impedimenta to check or divert it. I hastened to see if the lightning conductor ran clear to the water, and, finding the end of the wire coiled up in the port main-chains, flung it over- board and resumed my place at the wheel. Now that the vast surface of cloud was well for- ward of overhead, I observed that its front was an almost perfect semicircle, the extremities at either point of the horizon projecting like horns. There still remained, embraced by these horns, a clear expanse of steel-coloured sky. There the sea was light, but all to starboard it was black, and the terrible shadow was fast bearing down upon the ship. Crack I the lightning whizzed and turned the deck, spars and rigging into a network of blue fire. The peal that followed was a sudden explo- sion — a great dead crash, as though some mighty ponderous orb had fallen from the highest heaven upon the flooring of the sky and riven it. W. CLARK RUSSELL 97 Then I heard the rain. I scarcely know which was the more terrifying to see and hear— the rain, or the thunder and lightning. It was a cataract of water falling from a pro- digious elevation. It was a dense, impervious Mquid veil, shutting out all sight of sea and sky. It tore the water into foam in striking it. Then, boom ! down it came upon us. I held on by the wheel, and the boatswain jammed himself under the grating. It was not rain only — it was hail as big as eggs ; and the rain-drops were as big as eggs too. There was not a breath of air. This terrific fall came down in perfectly perpendicular lines ; and as the lightning rushed through it, it illuminated with its ghastly effulgence a broad sheet of water. It was so dark that I could not see the card in the binnacle. The water rushed off our decks just as it would had we shipped a sea. And for the space of twenty minutes I stood stunned, deaf, blind, in the midst of a horrible and overpowering concert of pealing thunder and rushing rain, the awful gloom being rendered yet more dreadful by the dazzling flashes which passed through it. W. Clark Russell. H 98 THE CALL OF THE SEA The Height of the Storm '^^^ ^;i>' (From Miles IVallingford) 'T^HE seas seemed crushed ; the pressure of the swooping atmosphere, as the currents of the air went howhng over the surface of the ocean, fairly prevented them from rising ; or where a mound of water did appear, it was scooped up and borne off in spray, as the axe dubs inequahties from the log. When the day returned, a species of lurid sombre light was diffused over the watery waste, though nothing was visible but the ocean and the ship. Even the sea-birds seemed to have taken refuge in the caverns of the adjacent coast, none reappearing with the dawn. Fenhnore Cooper. Greeks in a Storm 'Cy -^^y •<:i^ (From Eotheii) A 1 /"E were nearing the isle of Cyprus, when there arose half a gale of wind, with a heavy chop- ping sea. My Greek seamen considered that the weather amounted, not to a half, but to an integral gale of wind at the very least ; so they put up the helm, and scudded for twenty hours. When we neared the mainland of Anadoli the gale ceased, and a favourable breeze, springing up, soon brought A. W. KINGLAKE 99 US off Cyprus once more. Afterwards the wind changed again, but we were still able to lay our course by sailing close-hauled. We were at length in such a position, that by holding on our course for about half an hour we should get under the lee of the island, and find ourselves in smooth water, but the wind had been gradually freshening ; it now blew hard, and there was a hea\-y sea running. As the grounds for alarm rose, the crew gathered together in one close group ; they stood pale and grim under their hooded capotes like monks await- ing a massacre, anxiously looking by turns along the pathway of the storm, and then upon each other, and then upon the eye of the Captain, who stood by the helmsman. Presently the Ilydriot came aft, more moody than ever, the bearer of fierce remonstrance against the continuing of the struggle ; he received a resolute answer, and still we held our course. Soon there came a heavy sea that caught the bow of the brigantine as she lay jammed in betwixt the waves ; she bowed her head low under the waters, and shuddered through all her timbers, then gallantly stood up again over the striving sea with bowsprit entire. But where were the crew? It was a crew no longer, but rather a gathering of Greek citizens ; — the shout of the sea- men was changed for the murmuring of the ])eople — the spirit of the old Demos was alive. The men lOO THE CALL OF THE SEA came aft in a body, and loudly asked that the vessel should be put about, and that the storm be no longer tempted. Now, then, for speeches : the Captain, his eyes flashing fire, his frame all quivering with emotion— wielding his every limb, like another and a louder voice — pours forth the eloquent torrent of his threats, and his reasons, his commands, and his prayers ; he promises — he vows — he swears that there is safety in holding on — safety, if Greeks will be brave ! The men hear and are moved ; but the gale rouses itself once more, and again the raging sea comes trampling over the timbers that are the life of all. The fierce Hydriot advances one step nearer to the Captain, and the angry growl of the people goes floating down the wind ; but they listen, they waver once more, and once more resolve, then waver again, thus doubtfully hanging between the terrors of the storm and the persuasion of glorious speech, as though it were the Athenian that talked, and Philip of Macedon that thundered on the weather-bow. Brave thoughts winged on Grecian words gained their natural mastery over Terror ; the brigantine held on her course, and reached smooth water at last. A. W. Kinglake. W. p. SNOW lOI Off Cape Horn ^c:^ - (From A Two Years^ Cruise off Ticrra del Fuego) p) Y this time it was blowing very hard, and the huge seas, hke rolling Alps, with broad and deep valleys of a quarter of a mile breadth be- tween, came in an almost unbroken meridional line towards us. I soon found that we could run on no longer. In the hollow of the seas we were almost becalmed, while on their summit the wind caught us as though about to lift ship and men into the air and send all to instant destruction. The wild scud was flying fast ; the sea-birds swept round and round us, each time narrowing their circle, as these birds almost always do when a severe gale is approaching. The high and rugged land on our left was capped in clouds, and every- thing had within the past hour assumed a threaten- ing and gloomy look. On the particular night of which I am speaking 1 was fatigued, and sore, and cross, and despond- ing. If I attempted to rouse myself and take a few spasmodic steps along the deck, a sudden lift of the sea would send me flying in a frantic manner, and with bursting force, against some fixture of the ship. If I held fast by the rigging or the Ijulwark rail, and glanced upon that wild I02 THE CALL OF THE SEA mysterious sea, with its dark masses and snowy crests rolling terrifically on towards us, a sheet of spray, some hundred yards in length, would dash forward, and all but send me, as it did the little vessel, heeling over to the other side. Turn which way I would, look how I might, be stationary or be moving, it was all the same ; and, no matter what the ship, or what the voyage, or what the skill, or what the advantages possessed, I will say that such an awful night as we had off Cape Horn, and such as hundreds and hundreds similarly ex- perience, is a night as full of darkling terrors, ghostly and real, as any one can possibly conceive. Every sea that came seemed like a huge water- mountain ready to leap upon us ; and though its main body passed beneath our hull, yet in many instances perfect cataracts of water came pouring down upon us and streamed across our decks. Where the men got to I know not ; for I could neither see nor hear them at such particular moments. All I could do, all I thought to do, was to hold my breath, to gaze as if with fasci- nated look, and watch with an all but awful fear hoping that the mighty mass of briny element would pass us scathless or without much damage. And as it passed, with the thunder roar of wind and sea alike sounding in my ear, I stood as if entranced while I pierced the darkness to try and see if all were right and well. But satisfy myself R. L. STEVENSON AND LLOYD OSBOURNE IO3 I could not till in frequent demands I had made the inquiry; receiving for reply, "All right, sir! nothing gone, except a bit of the spare stuft to lee- ward ! " and so on ; only to be on the qui vive for the next giant wave, and to again sing out, as. I often did, when I saw it approach, " Look out there, men I Look out! Hold on every one of you ! Hold on ! " And thus the night passed on, and thus Cape Horn demanded of us its tribute ! It was cold, too ; it was wretchedly uncomfortable ; and fancy made me see before my eyes, even amidst that fearful darkness, a tempting and a dazzling home- side picture, where, around the parlour fire, sweet smiling faces and dear friends were congregated, as I really think in no one spot on earth but where the Anglo-Saxon dwells it is found in all its great enchantment. Truly did I feel its vainly wished- for pleasure now ; but truly might I wish, and wish in vain, for nothing, save the dark clouds of heaven and the fierce tempest, with the mighty uplifted ocean, was likely to meet my view. IV. P. Snow. Finding the Wreck ^^y ^o (From The Wreiker) 'T^HE morning broke with sinister brightness; the air alarmingly transparent, the sky pure, the rim of the horizon clear and strong against the I04 THE CALL OF THE SEA heavens. The whid and the wild seas, now vastly swollen, hidefatigably hunted us. I stood on deck choking with fear ; I seemed to lose all power upon my limbs ; my knees were as paper when she plunged into the murderous valleys ; my heart collapsed when some black mountain fell in ava- lanche beside her counter, and the water, that was more than spray, swept round my ankles like a torrent. I was conscious of but one strong desire — to bear myself decently in my terrors, and, what- ever should happen to my life, preserve my char- acter : as the captain said, we are a queer kind of beasts. Breakfast time came, and I made shift to swallow some hot tea. Then I must stagger below to take the time, reading the chronometer with dizzy eyes, and marvelling the while what value there could be in observations taken in a ship launched (as ours then was) like a missile among flying seas. The forenoon dragged on in a grind- ing monotony of peril ; every spoke of the wheel a rash but an obliged experiment — rash as a forlorn hope, needful as the leap that lands a fireman from a burning staircase. Noon was made ; the captain dined on his day's work, and I on watch- ing him ; and our place was entered on the chart with a meticulous precision which seemed to me half pitiful and half absurd, since the next eye to see that sheet of paper might be the eye of an exploring fish. One o'clock came, then two ; the R. L. STEVENSON AND LLOYD OSBOURNE 105 captain gloomed and chafed, as he held to the coaming of the house, and if ever I saw dormant murder in man's eye, it was in his. God help the hand that should have disobeyed him. Of a sudden he turned towards the mate, who was doing his trick at the wheel. "Two points on the port bow," I heard him say; and he took the wheel himself. Johnson nodded, wiped his eyes with the back of his wet hand, watched a chance as the vessel lunged up hill, and got to the main rigging, where he swarmed aloft. Up and up I watched liim go, hanging on at every ugly plunge, gaining with every lull of the schooner's movement, until, clambering into the cross-trees and clinging with one arm rountl the masts, I could see him lake one comprehensive sweep of the south-westerly horizon. The next moment he had slid down the backstay and stood on deck, with a grin, a nod, and a gesture of the finger that said '• Vcs " ; the next again, and he was back sweating and squirm- ing at the wheel, his tired face streaming and smiling, and his hair and the rags and corners of his clothes labiiing round him in the wind. Nares went below, fetched \\\) his binocular, and fell into a silent perusal of the sea-line ; I also, with my unaided eyesight. Little by lillle, in that white ro6 THE CALL OF THE SEA waste of water, I began to make out a quarter where the whiteness appeared more condensed ; the sky above was whitish hkewise, and misty hke a squall ; and little by little there thrilled upon my ears a note deeper and more terrible than the yelling of the gale — the long, thundering roll of breakers. Nares wiped his night-glass on his sleeve and passed it to me, motioning, as he did so, with his hand. An endless wilderness of raging billows came and went and danced in the circle of the glass ; now and then a pale corner of sky, or the strong line of the horizon rugged with the heads of waves ; and then of a sudden — come and gone ere I could fix it, with a swallow's swiftness — one glimpse of what we had come so far and paid so dear to see : the masts and rigging of a brig pencilled on heaven, with an ensign streaming at the main, and the ragged ribbons of a topsail thrashing from the yard. Again and again, with toilful searching, I recalled that appa- rition. There was no sign of any land ; the wreck stood between sea and sky, a thing the most isolated I had ever viewed ; but as we drew nearer I perceived her to be defended by a line of breakers which drew off on either hand and marked, indeed, the nearest segment of the reef. Heavy spray hung over them like a smoke, some hundred feet into the air ; and the sound of their consecutive explosions rolled like a cannonade. J. C. VAN DYKE I07 In half an hour we were close in ; for perhaps as long ayain we skirted that formidable barrier towards its farther side ; and presently the sea began insensibly to moderate and the ship to go more sweetly. We had gained the lea of the island, as (for form's sake) I may call that ring of foam and haze and thunder ; and, shaking out a reef, wore ship and headed for the passage. A". L. Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourtie. Calm after Storm '=::y ^e^ ^^ (From The Opal Sea) A LL night long the pound against the cliffs and "^^ the tremble of the shore ! All night the whistle of the spray-laden wind as it drives through the branches of the pines ! All night the curl and flash of the white crests on the open sea ! By morning perhaps the wind has fallen, the clouds have vanished, the sun is forth ; and yet for many hours afterward the far ocean waves keep swashing against each other and collapsing in swirls of foam. Finally the sea runs down, the breakers sink ; and at sunset as you walk along the beach all is quiet. It is hard to realize per- haps that the now smooth sea with its j)la( itl little swells could ever have worn such a savage front. But the traces of its fury still remain, 'i'lie dunes Io8 THE CALL OF THE SEA are cut through l)y inlets here and piled high with wet sand there, the beaches are ripped and torn, the boulders are rolled over, scarred and battered ; and the face-walls of the cliffs show where tons and tons of stone have been broken away and fallen into the sea. Perhaps far out upon the distant reef, where the white caps are still showing, hung helplessly upon the sharp-fanged rocks, heeled over on her side with masts and rigging all down, is the battered hulk of a schooner that was driven in by the wind the night before. The little black speck that moves slowly about her fore-foot is possibly a boat of a life-saving crew that was unable to save during the storm, and is now only making a perfunctory examination of what remains. Perhaps again the little knot of fisherfolk that is seen crowded to- gether far down the beach has found at the water's edge, half buried in the sand, a cold form with a frayed rope shirred about the waist, purplish hands with torn finger nails^ and a white face with wet hair clinging about it as the tide went out. Dead, quite dead ! Yes ; but what cares the sea ! Captain or cabin boy, prince or pauper, lover or hater, what cares the sea ! /. C. Van Dyke. VI SHIPS AND SEA TRAVEL I hear some of our sea Ya/ioos find fault with my sea language, as not proper in many parts, nor now in use. I cannot help it. In my first voyages, while I was young, I was instructed by the oldest mariners, and learned to speak as they did. But I have since found that the sea Yahoos are apt, like the land ones, to become newfangled in their words, which the latter change every year. . . . Jonathan Szvift (from "A Letter from Captain Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson"). Signs of Land 'v:^ ^c> . ^> (From Eito Perpdua) 'X'HERE is a sort of sail which may be called the original of all sails. It is the sail with which antiquity was familiar. It brought the sliijjs to Tenedos and the Argo carried it. The Nor- wegians had it when they were pirates a thousand Il8 THE CALL OF THE SEA years ago. They have it still. It is nearer a lug- sail than anything else, and indeed our Deal luggers carry something very near it. It is almost a square sail, but the yard has a slight rake and there is a bit of a peak to it. It is the kind of sail which seems to come first into the mind of any man when he sets out to use the wind. It is to be seen continually to-day hoisted above small boats in the north of Europe. But this sail is too simple. It will not go close to the wind, and in those light and variable airs which somehow have no force along the deck, it hangs empty and makes no way because it has no height. Now when during that great renaissance of theirs in the seventh century the Arabs left their deserts and took to the sea, they became for a short time in sailing, as in philosophy, the teachers of their new subjects. They took this sail, which they had found in all the ports they had concjuered along this coast — in Alexandria, in Cyrene, in Car- thage, in Caesarea — they lightened and lengthened the yard, they lifted the peak up high, they clewed down the foot, and very soon they had that tri- angular lateen sail which will, perhaps, remain when every other evidence of their early conquer- ing energy has disappeared. With such a sail they drove those first fleets of theirs which gave HILAIRE BELLOC II9 them at once the islands and the commerce of the Mediterranean. It was the sail which permitted their invasion of the northern shores and the un- happy subjection of Spain. We Europeans have for now some seven hundred years, from at least the Third Crusade, so con- stantly used this gift of Islam that we half forget its origin. You may see it in all the Christian harbours of the Mediterranean to-day, in every port of the Portuguese coast, and here and there as far north as the Channel. It is not to be seen beyond Cherbourg, but in Cherbourg it is quite common. . . . . . . The little ships so rigged come out like heralds far from the coast to announce the old dominion of the East and of the religion that made them : of the united civilization that has launched them over all its seas, from east of India to south of Zanzibar and right out here in the western place which we are so painfully recovering. They arc the only made thing, the on\y fonn wc accepted from the Arab : and we did well to accept it. The little ships are a delight. You see them everywhere. They belong to the sea and they animate it. They are similar as waves arc similar : they are different as waves are different. They come into a hundred positions against the light. They heel and lun wilh every mode of energy. 120 THE CALL OF THE SEA There is nothing makes a man's heart so buoyant as to see one of the httle ships bowhng along breast- high towards him, with the wind and the clouds behind it, careering over the sea. It seems to have borrowed something of the air and some- thing of the water, and to unite them both and to be their offspring and also their bond. When they are middle-way over the sea towards one under a good breeze, the little ships are things to remember. So it is when they carry double sail and go, as we say of our schooners, " wing and wing." For they can carry two sails when the wind is moderate, and especially when the vessel is run- ning before it ; but these two sails are not carried upon two masts, but both upon the same mast. The one is the common or working sail, carried in all weathers. The other is a sort of spinnaker, of which you may see the yard lying along decks in harbour or triced up a little by the halyard, so as to swing clear of the hands. When the little ships come up like this with either sail well out and square and their course laid straight before the general run of a fresh sea, rolling as they go, it is as though the wind had a friend and a companion of its own, understanding all its moods, so easily and rapidly do they arrive towards the shore. A little jib (along this coast at least) is bent along the forestay, and the dark line of it marks the HILAIRE BELLOC 12 1 swing and movement of the whole. So also when you stand and look from along their wake and see them leaving for the horizon along a slant of the Levantine, with the breeze just on their quarter and their laden hulls careening a trifle to leeward, you would say they were great birds, born of the sea, and sailing down the current from which they were bred. The peaks of their tall sails have a turn to them like the wing-tips of birds, especially of those darting birds which come up to us from the south after winter and shoot along their way. Moreover, the sails of these little ships never seem to lose the memory of power. Their curves and fulness always suggest a movement of the hull. Very often at sunset when the dead calm reflects things unbroken like an inland pond, the topmost angle of these latcens catches some hesitating air that stirs above, and leads it down the sail, so that a little ripple trembles round the bows of the boat, though all the water beside them is quite smooth, and you sec her gliding in without oars. She comes along in front of the twilight, as gradual and silent as the evening, and seems to be im- pelled by nothing more substantial than the advance of darkness. It is with such companions to proclaim the title of the land that one comes round under a point of hills and enters harbour. Ililnire Bclloc. 122 THE CALL OF THE SEA The Modern Steamship -v^ <::> (From The Opal Sea) T)UT however much of actual beauty cUngs to a sail, and however much of traditional rever- ence bids us scorn an innovation, is there not something to be said for the grim, fire-spitting ocean steamer? In common with all steam de- vices the steamship has come in for a fair share of denunciation ; but as a machine, as a resistless force, is there not something here to stir the pulses ? As she sweeps down the harbour and out over the bar, flags streaming, black smoke trailing, wide wake rolling, what could be finer ! She sits low down aft, she rises up keen and clean forward, her cutwater is as eager as a headsman's axe, her smoke-stacks have a slant astern as though ready for any wind or wave. What a sense of power is there ! What can stop the pas- sage of that dark conqueror ! And she moves with no apparent effort. The source of power is not disclosed to the eye. Nor can the ear detect the beat of engines. The steel mass seems to be driven by a force as invisible as resistless. No prayers to Oceanus, the parent of the gods, go up, when the ocean liner puts to sea. y€i^olus is not invoked for favourable winds, nor are the J. C. VAN DYKE 1 23 Tritons and Nereids put in good humour with promises and offerings. The ship of steel and steam seems to care httle for the elements. The tremendous power in the engines carries her through wind and storm, through wave and spray. Nothing halts or holds her for more than a moment. As the waters come rushing at her there is an easy bend and sway to the long body ; she rises and falls, rolls quietly with a broadside, pitches sharply with a head sea ; but there is no pause, no stop. The steady thrust of the screws keeps driving her ever on and on. Far away at sea her motion is still apparent, and finally when she is hull down beyond the rim, and only the black banner of smoke trailing along the horizon tells where she " blows," we still feel that she is moving, shouldering the waves away, push- ing on and on ; methodically, mechanically if you will, but still resistlessly. The mechanism and the method become almost human in their sluljborn perseverance when the vessel is steaming in storm against fierce head winds. There is the deep plunge of the bow in the waves, the alternate lift of the stern out of water, the swift racing of the exposed screws for a few moments ; and then the settling down again to a steady thump-thump, thump-thump, thump- thump ! The waves may board her and break 124 THE CALL OF THE SEA davits, bridges, and stanchions, she may pitch and roll till cabin and hold are a series of crashes and smashes, but those indomitable engines keep up their pulsations. You lie awake in the middle of the night clinging to your berth, hearing the whip- like swish of the spray flying by the port hole, listening to the roar of the wind in the rigging, feeling the vessel pitch and stagger under you, and perhaps wondering if rivets and plates of steel can long hold out against such wrenching ; but still beneath you, skipping no beat, is the welcome thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump of the engines. She was designed to defy the winds and fight the elements and she does it — with some groanings from strained partition, beam, and girder it may be, but still she does it. /. C. Van Dyke. (From The Mirror of the Sea) A ND besides, your modern ship, which is a steamship, makes her passage on other prin- ciples than yielding to the weather and humouring the sea. She receives smashing blows, but she advances ; it is a slogging fight, and not a scientific campaign. The machinery, the steel, the fire, the steam, have stepped in between the man and the sea. A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway. The modern ship is not the sport of the waves. Let us JOSEPH CONRAD I 25 say that each of her voyages is a triumphant pro- gress ; and yet it is a question whether it is not a more subtle and human triumph to be tjie sport of the waves and yet survive, achieving your end. In his own time a man is ahvays very modern. Whether the seaman of three hundred years hence will have the faculty of sympathy it is impossible to say. An incorrigible mankind hardens its heart in the progress of its own perfectability. How will they feel on seeing the illustrations to the sea novels of our day, or of our yesterday? It is impossible to guess. But the seaman of the last generation, brought into sympathy with the cara- vels of ancient time by his sailing ship, their lineal descendant, cannot look upon those lumbering forms navigating the naive seas of ancient wood- cuts without a feeling of surprise, of affectionate derision, envy, and admiration. For those things, whose unmanageableness, even when represented on paper, makes one gasp with a sort of amused horror, were manned by men who are his direct professional ancestors. No ; the seamen of three hundred years hence will probably be neither touched nor moved to derision, affection, or admiration. They will glance at the photogravures of our nearly defunct sailing- ships with a cold, inquisitive and indifferent eye. Our ships of yesterday will stand to their ships as no lineal ancestors, but as mere predecessors whose 126 THE CALL OF THE SEA course will have been run and the race extinct. Whatever craft he handles with skill, the seaman of the future shall be, not our descendant, but only our successor. Joseph Conrad. (From Still 'Occauo) "VJ ON m'era mai parso cosi bello il Galileo. Largo e poderoso ; ma le curve agili dei suoi fianchi e la grande lunghezza gli davan la grazia d'una gondola smisurata. I suoi alberi altissimi, congiunti come da una trama di cordami, pare- vano fusti di gigantesche palme diramate, legate da liane senza foglie, e le ampie bocche purpuree delle trombe a vento rendevan I'immagine di colossal! calici di fiori, attirati dall'America invece che dal sole. I fianchi neri di catrame e severi, la coperta irta di ordigni di ferro e sorvolata da nuvoli di fumo oscuro ; ma questo aspetto rude di vasta officina, rallegrato dalle lance azzurrine Hbrate sui parapetti, dalle alte maniche a vento candide e gonfie, dai ponti mobili spiccanti nel cielo, da cento luccichii di metalli, di legni, di vetri, da mille oggetti e forme diverse e bizzarre, che rappresentano ciascuna una comoditi\, un'ele- ganza, una difesa, un'industria, una forza. E il rumorio della macchina, i colpi profondi del pro- pulsore, le piattonate dell'elice, il cigoho delle catene del timone, il sibilo del solcometro, il fre- EDMONDO DE AMICIS 12J mito delle griselle, il tintinmo dei cristalli sospesi, formano una musica diffusa e strana, che accai'ezza I'orecchio ed entra neH'anima come un linguaggio misterioso di gente sparpagliata e invisibile, che a bassa voce s'inciti a vicenda al lavoro e alia lotta. La poppa sussulta sotto i nostri piedi come la carcassa d'un corpo vivo ; il colosso ha guizzi im- provisi, dei quali non si comprende la causa, e che paion tremiti di febbre, scatti bruschi e senza grazia, che paiono atti di dispetto, e mosse repli- cate di prua, che sembian gli scotimenti d'una enorme testa che pensi ; e fila altre volte per lunghi tratti cosi fermo e pari sul mare agitato, che una palla d'avorio non si moverebbe sullc sue tavole, e pare che non lambisca le onde. E va senza posa, nella nebbia, nelle tenebre, contro il vento, contro I'onda, con un popolo sul dorso, con cinquemila tonnellate nel ventre, dall'uno all' altro inondo, guidato infallibilmente da una piccola spranghetla d'acciaio che puo servire a tagliare i fogli d'un libro, e da un uomo che fa girare una ruota di legno con un leggcro sforzo delle mani. Noi ricorriamo col pensiero la storia della navi- gazione, e risalendo dal tronco d'albero alia zattera, dalla piroga alia barca a rcmi, e su su per tuttc le forme della nave ingranditc e fortificate dai sccoli, ci fermianio dinanzi a quella forma ultima per raffrontarla alia prima, e il cuorc ci si gonfia d'ammirazionc, c ci domandiamo quale altra o[)cra 128 THE CALL OF THE SEA meccanica piii maravigliosa abbia compiuto la razza umana. Piu maravigliosa dell'oceano che essa rompe e divora, e alia cui minaccia continua risponde collo strepito infaticato dei suoi con- gegni : — Tu sei immenso, ma sei un bruto ; io son piccolo, ma sono un genio ; tu separi i mondi, ma io li lego, tu mi circondi, ma io passo, tu sei stra- potente, ma io so. Edniondo de Ainicis. (From The Future in America) "POR example, consider this last year's last word in ocean travel in which 1 am crossing, the Car7nania, with its unparalleled steadfastness, its racing tireless great turbines, its vast population of 3244 souls ! It has, on the whole, a tremendous effect of having come by fate and its own forces. One forgets that any one planned it, much of it indeed has so greatly the quality of moving, as the planets move, in the very nature of things. You go aft and see the wake tailing away across the blue ridges ; you go forward and see the cleft water lift protestingly, roll back in an indignant crest, own itself beaten, and go pouring by in great foam- ing waves on either hand ; you see nothing, you hear nothing of the toiling engines, the reeking stokers, the effort and the stress below ; you beat west and west, as the sun does, and it might seem with nearly the same independence of any living JOHN MASEFIELD I 29 man's help or opposition. Equally so does it seem this great gleaming confident thing of power and metal came inevitably out of the past, and will lead on to still more shiping, still swifter and securer monsters in the future. One sees in a perspective of history, first the little cockle-shells of Columbus, the comings and goings of the precarious Tudor adventurers, the slow uncertain shipping of colonial days. . . . We're a city rather than a ship, our funnels go up over the height of any reasonable church spire, and you need walk the main deck from end to end and back only four times to do a mile. Any one who has been to London and seen Trafalgar Square will get our dimensions perfectly when he realizes that we should only squeeze into that finest site in Europe, diagonally, dwarfing the National Gallery, St. Martin's Church, hotels, and every other building there out of e.xistence, our funnels towering five feet higher than Nelson on his ^°^""^"- //. G. IVells. Running Before the Wind ^o -;:> (From A Tarpaulin Muster) ■\17'E were at sea off the Kivcr I'late, running south like a stag. The wind had been slowly freshening for twenty-four hours, and for one whole day wc had whitened the sea like a battleship. K 130 THE CALL OF THE SEA Our run for the day had been 271 knots, which we thought a wonderful run, though it has, of course, been exceeded by many ships. For this ship it was an exceptional run. The wind was on the quarter, her best point of sailing, and there was enough wind for a glutton. Our captain had the reputation of being a " cracker-on," and on this occasion he drove her till she groaned. For that one wonderful day we staggered and swooped, and bounded in wild leaps, and burrowed down and shivered, and anon rose up shaking. The wind roared up aloft and boomed in the shrouds, and the sails bellied out as stiff as iron. We tore through the sea in great jumps — there is no other word for it. She seemed to leap clear from one green roaring ridge to come smashing down upon the next. I have been in a fast steamer — a very fast turbine steamer — doing more than twenty knots, but she gave me no sense of great speed. In this old sailing ship the joy of the hurry was such that we laughed and cried aloud. The noise of the wind booming, and the clack, clack, clack of the sheet-blocks, and the ridged seas roaring past us, and the groaning and whining of every block and plank, were like tunes for a dance. We seemed to be tearing through it at ninety miles an hour. Our wake whitened and broadened, and rushed away aft in a creamy fury. We were run- ning here, and hurrying there, taking a small pull JOHN MASEFIELD 131 of this, and getting another inch of that, till we were weary. But as we hauled we sang and shouted. We were possessed of the spirits of the wind. We could have danced and killed each other. We were in an ecstasy. We were pos- sessed. We half believed that the ship would leap from the waters and hurl herself into the heavens, like a winged god. Over her bows came the sprays in showers of sparkles. Her foresail was wet to the yard. Her scuppers were brooks. Her swing-ports spouted like cataracts. Recollect, too, that it was a day to make your heart glad. It was a clear day, a sunny day, a day of brightness and splendour. The sun was glorious in the sky. The sky was of a blue unspeakable. We were tearing along across a splendour of sea that made you sing. Far as one could see there was the water — shining and shaking. Blue it was, and green it was, and of a dazzling brilliance in the sun. It rose up in hills and in ridges. It smashed into a foam and roared. It towered up again and toppled. It mounted and shook in a rhythm, in a tune, in a music. One could have flung one's body to it as a sacrifice. One longed to be in it, to be a part of it, to be beaten and banged by it. It was a wonder and a glory and a terror. It was a riumph, it was royal, to see tliat beauty. John Masejleld. 132 THE CALL OF THE SEA A Day on the Ocean ^;> -<::> '<;:> (From Captains Courageous) npHE low-sided schooner was naturally on most intimate terms with her surroundings. They saw little of the horizon save when she topped a swell ; and usually she was elbowing, fidgeting, and coaxing her steadfast way through gray, gray- blue, or black hollows laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam, or rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger water- hill. It was as if she said, "You wouldn't hurt me, surely? I'm only the little We're Hej-e.^^ Then she would slide away chuckling softly to herself till she was brought up by some fresh obstacle. The dullest of folk cannot see this kind of thing hour after hour through long days without noticing it ; and Harvey, being anything but dull, began to comprehend and enjoy the dry chorus of wave- tops turning over with a sound of incessant tear- ing ; the hurry of the winds working across open spaces and herding the purple-blue cloud shadows ; the splendid upheaval of the red sunrise ; the fold- ing and packing away of the morning mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors ; the salty glare and blaze of noon ; the kiss of rain fall- ing over thousands of dead, flat square miles ; the chilly blackening of everything at the day's end ; FERDINAND MAGELLAN 1 33 and the million wrinkles of the sea under the moonlight, when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars. . . . Rudyard Kipling. Pains of Early Sea Travel <:> <::> (From A First Voyai^e Round the World; Hakluyt Soc, trans. ) VX/EDNESDAY, the twenty-eighth of Novem- ber, 1520, we came forth out of the said strait, and entered into the Pacific sea, where we remained three months and twenty days without taking in provisions or other refreshments, and we only ate old biscuit reduced to powder, and full of grubs, and stinking from the dirt which the rats had made on it when eating the good biscuit, and we drank water that was yellow and stinking. We also ate the o.\ hides which were under the main- yard, so that the yard should not break the rigging ; they were very hard on account of the sun, rain, and wind, and we left them for four or five days in the sea, and then we put them a little on the embers, and so ate them ; also the sawdust of wood, and rats which cost half-a-crown each, moreover enough of them were not to be got. Besides the above-named evils, this misfortune which I will mention was the worst, it was that the upper and lower gums of most of our men grew so iniirh that they could not eat, and in this way so 134 THE CALL OF THE SEA many suffered, that nineteen died, and the other giant, and an Indian from the county of Verzin. Besides those who died, twenty-five or thirty fell ill of divers sicknesses, both in the arms and legs, and other places, in such manner that very few remained healthy. However, thanks be to the Lord, I had no sickness. During those three months and twenty days we went in an open sea, while we ran fully four thousand leagues in the Pacific sea. This was well named Pacific, for during this same time we met with no storm, and saw no land except two small uninhabited islands, in which we found only birds and trees. We named them the Unfortunate Islands ; they are two hundred leagues apart from one another, and there is no place to anchor, as there is no bottom. There we saw many sharks, which are a kind of large fish which they call Tiburoni. The first isle is in fifteen degrees of austral latitude, and the other is in nine degrees. With the said wind we ran each day fifty or sixty leagues, or more ; now with the wind astern, sometimes on a wind or otherwise. And if our Lord and his Mother had not aided us in giving us good weather to refresh ourselves with provisions and other thmgs, we should all have died of hunger in this very vast sea, and I think that never man will undertake to perform such a voyage. Ferdifta7td Magellan. WASHINGTON IRVING 1 35 Charm of a Sea Voyage •^^y ^o (From The Sketch Book) T SAID that at sea all is vacancy ; I should cor- rect the expression. To one given to day- dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea voyage is full of subjects of meditation ; but then they are the wonders of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes. I delighted to loll over the quarter-railing, or climb to the main-top, of a calm day, and muse for hours together on the tranquil bosom of a summer's sea ; to gaze upon the piles of golden clouds just peering above the horizon, fancy them some fairy realms, and people them with a creation of my own ; — to watch the gentle undulating billows, rolling their silver volumes, as if to die away on those happy shores. There was a delicious sensation of mingled security and awe with which I looked down, from my giddy height, on the monsters of the deep at their uncouth gambols. Shoals of porpoises tum- bling about the bow of the ship ; the grampus slowly heaving his huge form above the surface ; or the ravenous shark, darling, like a spectre, through the blue waters. My imagination would conjure up all that I had heard or read of the watery world beneath me ; of the finny herds that 136 THE CALL OF THE SEA roam its fathomless valleys ; of the shapeless monsters that lurk among the very foundations of the earth ; and of those wild phantasms that swell the tales of fishermen and sailors. . . . We one day descried some shapeless object drifting at a distance. At sea everything that breaks the monotony of the surrounding expanse attracts attention. It proved to be the mast of a ship that must have been completely wrecked, for there were remains of handkerchiefs by which some of the crew had fastened themselves to this spar, to prevent themselves being washed off by the waves. There was no trace by which the name of the ship could be ascertained. The wreck had evidently drifted about for many months ; clusters of shellfish had fastened about it, and long seaweeds flaunted at its sides. Washington Irving. Life on Board Ship •<:>• '^o ^^ (From The Voyage of II. M.S. "Beagle") TV /r ANY of the losses which must be experienced are obvious ; such as that of the society of every old friend, and of the sight of those places with which every dearest remembrance is so in- timately connected. These losses, however, are at the time partly relieved by the exhaustless delight of anticipating the long wished-for day of return. CHARLES DARWIN I 37 If, as poets say, life is a dream, I am sure in a voyage these are the visions which best serve to pass away the long night. Other losses, although not at first felt, tell heavily after a period : these are the want of room, of seclusion, of rest ; the jading feeling of constant hurry ; the privation of small luxuries, the loss of domestic society, and even of music and the other pleasures of imagina- tion. When such trifles are mentioned, it is evi- dent that the real grievances, excepting from accidents, of a sea-life are at an end. The short space of sixty years has made an astonishing differ- ence in the facility of distant navigation. Even in the time of Cook, a man who left his fireside for such expeditions underwent severe privations. A yacht now, with every luxury of life, can circum- navigate the globe. Resides the vast improve- ments in ships and naval resources, the whole western shores of America are thrown open, and Australia has become the capital of a rising con- tinent. How different are the circumstances to a man shipwrecked at the present day in the Pacific, to what they were in the time of Cook ! Since his voyage a hemisphere has been added to the civilised world. If a person suffers much from sea-sickness, let him weigh it heavily in the balance. I speak from experience : it is no trifling evil, cured in a week. 138 thp: call of the ska If, on the other hand, he takes pleasure in naval tactics, he will assuredly have full scope for his taste. But it must be borne in mind how large a proportion of the time, during a long' voyage, is spent on the water, as compared with the days in harbour. And what are the boasted glories of the illimitable ocean ? A tedious waste, a desert of water, as the Arabian calls it. No doubt there are some delightful scenes. A moonlight night, with the clear heavens and the dark glittering sea, and the white sails filled by the soft air of a gently- blowing trade-wind ; a dead calm, with the heaving surface polished like a mirror, and all still except the occasional flapping of the canvas. It is well once to behold a squall with its rising arch and coming fury, or the heavy gale of v/ind and moun- tainous waves. I confess, however, my imagina- tion had painted something more grand, more terrific, in the full-grown storm. It is an incom- parably finer spectacle when beheld on shore, where the waving trees, the wild flight of the birds, the dark shadows and bright lights, the rushing of the torrents, all proclaim the strife of tlie unloosed elements. At sea the albatross and little petrel fly as if the storm were their proper sphere, the water rises and sinks as if fulfilling its usual task, the ship alone and its inhabitants seem the objects of wrath. On a forlorn and weather- beaten coast the scene is indeed different, but the CHARLES DICKENS 139 feelings partake more of horror than of wild de- light. Charles Darwin. The Channel Crossing • •«;:y (From Americatt Notes) A HEAD-WIND ! Imagine a human face upon the vessel's prow, with fifteen thousand Sam- sons in one bent upon driving her back, and hitting her exactly between the eyes whenever she attempts to advance an inch. Imagine the ship herself, with every pulse and artery of her huge body swollen and bursting under this maltreatment, sworn to go on or die. Imagine the wind howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating : all in furious array against her. Picture the sky both dark and wild, and the clouds in fearful sympathy with the waves, making another ocean in the air. Add to all this, the clattering on deck and down below ; the tread of hurried feet ; the loud hoarse shouts of seamen ; the gurgling in and out of water through the scup- pers ; with, every now and then, the striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above, and the deep? dead, heavy sound of thunder heard within a CHARLES DICKENS 147 vault ; — and there is the head-wind of that January morning. . . . . . . But what the agitation of a steam-vessel is, on a bad winter's night in the wild Atlantic, it is impossible for the most vivid imagination to con- ceive. To say that she is flung down on her side in the waves, with her masts dipping into them, and that, springing up again, she rolls over on the other side, until a heavy sea strikes her with the noise of a hundred great guns, and hurls her back — that she stops, and staggers, and shivers, as though stunned, and then, with a violent throb- ping at her heart, darts onward like a monster goaded into madness, to be beaten down, and battered, and crushed, and leaped on by the angry sea — that thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, and wind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery — that every plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in the great ocean its howl- ing voice — is nothing. To say that all is grand, and all appalling and horrible in the last degree, is nothing. Words cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream can call it up again, in all its fury, rage, and passion. Charles Dickens. 148 THE CALL OF THE SEA Leaving the Thames ^cix <;> (From The Other Side of the Lantern) HTHE Thames creeps from under the fog, as if it came forth from a tunnel. Here at Tilbury it is a villainous tramp of a river. Dirty, sullen, and strong, it lurches down to the sea. It seems to revel in its dirtiness, for every eddy it turns up brings from the depths fresh realisations of a deeper dirt. It rubs its muddy shoulders along the shrinking banks, so that they are soiled by its touch. Mud and mist replace the glories of stream and sky. Where there may have been fields trod- den by leisurely folk, with stiles for them to rest at and hedgerows for them to make love among, there are gullies and dj'kes of slime, a village of dismal sheds, and a spinney of cranes and derricks. The very grass, struggling up among ashes and rusting iron, looks lean and dissipated. All this is the outcome of man's enterprise and industry. The huge, beery ogre of labour, dirty and sweating from his work, has thrown himself down in the lady's garden, and the lilies and the roses are crushed and sullied by his inconsiderate form. In the background towards London there rises in the mist, beyond a palisade of masts, a forest of chimneys with foliage of smoke. Ships seem to be JOHN MACGREGOR 149 Standing on dry land, and factories to be floating on the river. Spars and rigging, which have hummed with the bright wind of the Indies, hang over rows of callous houses. Here and there is a puff of red flame from a furnace door — a will o' the wisp in a mist of soot. The stream would appear to come from a Pur- gatorio of labour, from some spectral workshop in which there is no rest from the dulness of eternal toil. Yet there is something about the place char- acteristic of England, of the obstinate energy of the race, and of its brutal disregard of all obstacles physical, moral, or aesthetic when work is to be done or money is to be made. The steamer swings at last towards the sea, and her long journey is begun. The chilled dock quay is deserted save to a few men who are languidly dragging in wet ropes, and a few others who are absorbed in what Stevenson calls that "richest form of idleness — hanging about harbour sides." Sir F. Treves. A Canoe at Sea •'O -Qy (From The "Kob Koy" on l/ie Jordan) A T Alexandria once more we launched tlic Rob "^^ Roy to embark her on board the Dclld^ bound for home. Farther out, and tossing in a gallant breeze, was the Ariadne frigate, the sea home of 150 THE CALI. OF THE SEA our Commodore, and of that fair Princess who has won from all Englishmen the hardest thing to win, our affectionate regard. The waves tossed angry and boisterous as the Rob Roy ran out among the sharks to salute the Royal yacht. The crew clustered thick in the rigging of the stately frigate, and cheered the tiny consort with goodwill. " Turn round before the wind," they cried, " and show how you can go." It was a moment both of pride and of fear to me : pride in the craft that could finish such a voyage, and fear lest the finish was to be in a cap- size. But the Rob Roy blithely turned upon a wave top and flew along the foam, and carried safe through all her little flag, and a heart that beat high with grateful praise to Him who had vouch- safed to me thus to enjoy one of the happiest days of a very happy life. John Macgregor. VII LIFE IN THE SEA We can scarcely poke or pry for an hour among the rocks, at low-water mark, or walk, with an observant downcast eye, along the beach after a gale, without find- ing some oddly-fashioned, suspicious-looking being, un- like any form of life that we have seen before. The dark concealed interior of the sea becomes thus invested with a fresh mystery; its vast recesses appear to be stored with all imaginable forms ; and we are tempted to think there must be multitudes of living creatures whose very figure and structure have never yet been suspected. Philip Gosse (from The Aquarium). Variety of Types 'c:^ (From the Voyages) 'T^HERE be also of sea fishes which wee sawe comming along the coast flying, which are of the bignesse of a smelt, the biggest sorte whereof haue four winges, but the other haue but two. Of these we sawe comming out of Guinea, a hun- dreth in a companie, which being chased by the Gilt heads, otherwise called the Bonitoes, doe to auoide them the better take their flight out of the water, but yet are they not able to flie farre, be- cause of the drying of their winges, which serue them not to flye but when they are moyste, and therefore when they can flye no further fan into the water, and hauing wette their winges take a newe flight againe. These Bonitoes be of bignesse like a carpe, and in colour like a mackarell, but it is the swiftest fish in swimming that is, and follow- eth her praye very fiercely not onely in the water, but also out of the water : for as the flying fish taketh her flight, so doeth this Bonitoe leape after them, and taketh them sometime aboue the water. J. HAWKINS 155 They were some of those Bonitoes, which being galled by a fisgig did follow our ship comtning out of Guinea 500 leagues. There is a sea foule also that chaseth this flying fish as wel as the Bonito : for as the flying fish taketh her flight, so doth this foule pursue to take her, which to beholde is a greater pleasure than hauking, for both the flights are as pleasant, and also more often then 100 times : for the foule can flie no way but one or other lighteth in her pawes, the nomber of them are so abundant. There is an innumerable yonge frie of these flying fishes which commonly keepe about the shippe, and are not so big as butterflies, and yet by flying doe auoyde the vnsatiablenesse of the Bonito. Of the bigger sort of these fishes, we tooke many, which both night and day flew into the sailes of our shippe, and there was not one of them which was not worth a lionito : for being put vpon a hooke drab- ling in the water, the Bonito would leape thereat, and so was taken. Also, we tooke many with a white clothe made fast to a hooke, which being tied so short in the water, that it might leape out, and in, the greedie Bonito thinking it to be a flying fish leapeth thereat, and is deceiued. . . . The manner of hunting and hawking represent- cth that which we reasonable creatures use, saving oncly in the disposing of thf: game. For by our industry and abilitie the hound and liawkc is 156 THE CALL OK THIC SEA brought to that obedience, that whatever they seize is for their master : but here it is otherwise : for the game is for him that seizeth it; The dol- phins and bonitoes are the houndes, and the alcatraces the hawkes, and the flying fishes the game ; whose wonderful! making magnifieth the Creator, who for their safetie and helpe, hath given them extraordinary manner of fynnes, which serve in stead of wings, like those of the batt or rere- mouse ; of such a delicate skinne, interlaced with small bones so curiously, as may well cause ad- miration in the beholders. They are like unto pilchards in colour, and making ; saving that they are somewhat rounder, and (for the most part) bigger. They flie best with a side wind, but longer then their wings be wett they cannot sus- taine the waight of their bodies ; and so the greatest flight that I have scene them make, hath not beene above a quarter of a myle. They commonly goe in scoles, and serve for food for the greater fishes, or for the foules. The dolphins and bonitos doe continually hunt after them, and the alcatraces lye soaring in the ayre, to see when they spring, or take their flight ; and ordinarily, he that escapeth the mouth of the dolphin or bonito, helping himselfe by his wings, falleth prisoner into the hands of the alcatrace, and helpeth to fill his gorge. J. Hawkins. FRAN^OISE PYRARD I 57 (From the Voyage; Hakluyt Soc, trans.) TTERE you see a strange quantity of fish, about as big as those called mullet, which have wings like bats, by means of which, when pursued by the larger fish, they dart out of the water and fly a long way until their wings are dry. So, on the other hand, when they are in the air, the sea birds, of which there is a vast multitude, give them chase and catch them, unless they first regain the sea. Many of them fell on our ships, and when once they fall on something hard where there is no water, they cannot raise themselves again. Thus we got some fresh food (and much pleasure too in watching the chase), for this fish is delicate and good eating. But it was a marvellous sight to see in so deep sea and in this quarter so vast a number of fish, that we might say we saw the whole sea covered with them, and all in a turmoil, though it was calm. There were also big ones, such as bonitos and albachores, and many other kinds, of which we caught with lines enough to supply the ship ; and porpoises too, with harpoons attached to pieces of wood, then lifting them by strength of arm. I have seen these flying fish everywhere near the line, both on this and on the other side of the Cape of Good Hope, and both N. and S. of the line. Francois Pyrard. 158 THE CALL OF THE SEA (From A Voyage to the East Indies ; Hakluyt Soc, trans. ) A BOUT that Hand and the Hand of Saint Helena, unto the Equinoctiall line, there are flying Fishes, as great as Herings, which flie by great flockes together, two or three Fadome above the water, and flie in that manner at the least a quarter of a mile, untill their wings or finnes be drie, and then they can flie no longer, but fall into the water, and there wet themselves, and then flie againe above the water. The cause why they flie in that sort is, because they are chased by the great fishes, that eate them, and to escape from them, they flie above the water, and some times into the shippes : for many of them fell into our ship, which flew too high, for when their wings are drie they must needes fall. LinschotPtt. Mystery of the Ocean ^vi^ ^o (From The Pirate) 'X'HE ocean also had its mysteries, the effect of which was aided by the dim twilight, through which it was imperfectly seen for more than half the year. Its bottomless depths and secret caves contained, according to the account of Sweyn and SIR WALTER SCOTT 159 others skilled in legendary lore, such wonders as modern navigators reject with disdain. An the quiet moonlight bay, where the waves came rip- pling to the shore, upon a bed of smooth sand intermingled with shells, the mermaid was still seen to glide along the waters by moonlight and, mingling her voice with the sighing breeze, was often heard to sing of subterranean wonders, or to chant prophecies of future events. The kraken, the hugest of living things, was still supposed to cumber the recesses of the Northern Ocean ; and often, when some fog-bank covered the sea at a distance, the eye of the experienced boatman saw the horns of the monstrous leviathan walking and waving amidst the wreaths of mist, and bore away with all press of oar and sail, lest the sudden suction, occasioned by the sinking of the mon- strous mass to the bottom, should drag within the grasp of its multifarious feelers his own frail skiff. The sea-snake was also known, which, arising out of the depths of ocean, stretches to the skies his enormous neck, covered with a mane like that of a war-horse, and, with his broad glittering eyes raised masthead high, looks out, as it seems, for plunder or for victims. Str IValier Scott. l6o THE CALL OF THE SEA Victory of the Coral-Builders <:;> (From The Voyage of H. M.S. "Beagle") T CAN hardly explain the reason, but there is to my mind much grandeur in the view of the outer shores of these lagoon islands. There is a simplicity in the barrier-like beach, the margin of green bushes and tall cocoa-nuts, the solid flat of dead coral-rock, strewed here and there with great loose fragments, and the line of furious breakers, all rounding away towards either hand. The ocean, throwing its waters over the broad reef, appears an invincible, all-powerful enemy ; yet we see it resisted, and even conquered, by means which at first seem most weak and inefficient. It is not that the ocean spares the rock of coral ; the great fragments scattered over the reef, and heaped on the beach, whence the tall cocoa-nut springs, plainly bespeak the unrelenting power of the waves. Nor are any periods of repose granted. The long swell caused by the gentle but steady action of the trade-wind, always blowing in one direction over a wide area, causes breakers, almost equalling in force those during a gale of wind in the temperate regions, and which never cease to rage. It is impossible to behold these waves without feeling a conviction that an island, though built of the hardest rock, let it be porphyry, C. F. HOLDER l6l granite, or quartz, would ultimately yield and be demolished by such an irresistible power. Yet these low, insignificant coral-islets stand and are victorious ; for here another power, as an antago- nist, takes part in the contest. The organic forces separate the atoms of carbonate of lime, one by one, from the foaming breakers, and unite them into a symmetrical structure. Let the hurricane tear up its thousand huge fragments ; yet what will that tell against the accumulated labours of myriads of architects at work night and day, month after month ? Thus do we see the soft and gela- tinous body of a polypus, through the agency of the vital laws, conquering the great mechanical power of the waves of an ocean which neither the art of man nor the inanimate works of nature could successfully resist. Charles Darwin. The Sea-Garden •<:> <:> <:iy (From 7'he Log of a Sea- Angler) T^HE island of Santa Catalina is a picture with a turquoise background, the Kuroshiwo of Japan, which flows down our coast and has a frame of emerald green, the kelp beds ; and with rare ex- ceptions the entire Pacific coast is protected in this way, the giant weed rising in water thirty or more feet in height, reaching the surface, and forming M l62 THE CALL OF THE SEA in many instances a barrier against the heavy sea which comes rolling in across the broad expanse of ocean. Especially at Santa Catalina it forms, in the smooth water of the north and east coasts, a series of beautiful floating gardens, twenty or more miles in extent ; a forest of the sea of varied attractions, in which are found strange and often beautiful fishes, and other marine animals, specially adapted or modified by nature to their peculiar environment. Midday, at half-tide, is the best time to visit these floating gardens ; then the bottom can be plainly seen, a vivid turquoise blue gleaming brightly through the interstices of golden branches, really green, which, when illumined by the sun, take an old gold hue. The leaves are ten, twenty, or even thirty feet in length, twelve inches in width, richly fluted, and hang in myriad positions of grace and beauty, so that, in peering down from above, one looks through halls and parterres in- numerable, that extend and reach away to infinity. In South America, especially about the Falkland Islands, the kelp, or Macrocysiis, attains an enor- mous length. Sections estimated at one thousand feet have been taken up and employed as cables for ships, which were thus saved the trouble of lowering and hoisting their anchors. On this desolate coast the kelp forms a protecting fringe for fishes, which otherwise would be unable to live, C. F. HOLDER 1 63 owing to the heavy surf that is always piling in ; and thus incidentally the miserable Patagonians are saved from starvation, subsisting almost entirely upon the fishes, the barren half-frozen land pro- ducing little or nothing. Everywhere alongshore this maze of hardy vines constitutes a shelter for many animals. It is a forest of seaweed, rising from great depths, rolling over and over in strange but graceful convolu- tions in the surf or tidal currents, a menace to swimmers and at times to vessels, but, when dor- mant and illumined by the sun, a thing of radiant beauty. Along the Santa Catalina coast, at extreme low tide, the kelp lies in such thick involved masses that it forms an almost impassable barrier. These huge vines, which do not indicate a rocky coast, fasten to small rocks or stones anywhere in water of medium depth from a few yards to half a mile from shore ; and, when cast up, show the short roots coiled about some small object with a vice- like grip. These floating gardens afford a home to a multitude of animals, strange, because they have insensibly taken on a singular means of pro- tection, mimicking the tone or color of the leaf These animals include crabs, shell-less mollusks, and fishes. One of the crabs, which is nearly two inches across, is so perfect an imitation of the kelp that when lying directly before my eyes it was 164 THE CALL OF THE SEA almost impossible to see it unless it moved. It has peculiar points and spikes which further in- tensify the resemblance. Lying on the great leaves are numbers of slug-like creatures, " shells " without shells, tinted green, safe in this protection from nearly all intruders. But the most remark- able resemblance is seen in a fish called the kelp fish. It is about a foot in length, the exact colour of the kelp, with a long continuous dorsal fin, frilled exactly like the edge of the leaf. Did this fish dart about, or comport itself as other fishes, it would at once be observed, but it does nothing of the kind ; it lies at the bottom, or near it, standing literally upon its head, with its tail extending upward with the shorter kelp leaves, and in this position, hanging in the gardens, waves to and fro with every swell that sways the forest of algffi. C. F. Holder. The Bottom of the Sea ^> <:> (From Viiigi Milk Lieues sous les Afers) |UI ! un taillis d'arbres morts, sans feuilles. O' sans sdve, arbres mindralisds sous I'action des eaux, et que dominaient qh. et \h. des pins gigan- tesques. C'dtait comme une houill^re encore debout, tenant pars ses racines au sol efibndrd, et dont la ramure, k la maniere des fines ddcoupures JULES VERNE 1 65 de papier noir, se dessinait nettement sur le pla- fond des eaux. Que I'on se figure une foret du Hartz, accrochee aux flancs d'une montagne, mais une foret engloutie. Les senliers etaient en- combres d'algues et de fucus, entre lesquels grouillait un raonde de crustacds. J'allais, gravis- sant les rocs, enjambant les troncs etendus, brisant les lianes de mer qui se balan^aient d'un arbre k I'auire, eftarouchant les poissons qui volaient de branche en branche. Entrain^, je ne sentais plus la fatigue. Je suivais mon guide qui ne se fati- guait pas. Quel spectacle ! Comment le rendre ? Com- ment peindre I'aspect dc ces bois et de ces rochers dans ce milieu liquide, leurs dcssous sombres et farouches, leurs dessus colores de tons rouges sous cette clart(5 que doublait la puissance rdverbd- ranie des eaux ? Nous gravissions des rocs qui s'dboulaient ensuite par pans dnormes, avec un sourd grondement d'avalanche. A droite, a gauche, se crcusaient de tdnObreuses galeries ou se perdait le regard, lei s'ouvraient de vastes clairiores, que la main de I'homme semblait avoir ddgagdes, et je me demandais parfois si quelque habitant de ces regions sous-marines n'allait pas tout k coup m'apparaitre. Mais Ic capitaine Nemo montait toujours. Je nc voulais pas rester en arricre. Jc le suivais hardimcnt. Mon b^ton me pretait un utile secours. 1 66 THE CALL OF THE SEA Un faux pas eut dte dangereux sur ces etroites passes evidees aux flancs des gouffres ; mais j'y marchais d'un pied ferme et sans lessentir I'ivresse du vertige. Tantot je sautais une crevasse dont la profondeur m'eut fait reculer au milieu des glaciers de la terre ; tantot je m'aventurais sur le tronc vacillant des arbres jetds d'un abime k I'autre, sans regarder sous mes pieds, n'ayant des yeux que pour admirer les sites sauvages de cette region. La, des rocs monumentaux, penchant sur leurs bases irrcguli^rement decoupees, semblaient ddfier les lois de I'e'quilibre. Entre leurs genoux de pierre, des arbres poussaient comma un jet sous une pression formidable, et soutenaient ceux qui les soutenaient eux-memes. Puis, des tours naturelles, de larges pans taille's k pic comma des courtines, s'inclinaient sous un angle que les lois de la gravitation n'eussent pas autorisd k la surface des regions terrestres. Et moi-mcme ne sentais-je pas cette diffe'rence due k la puissante densite de I'eau, quand, malgre mes lourds vetements, ma tete de cuivre, mes semelles de mdtal, je m'dlevais sur des pentes d'une impracticable raideur, les franchissant pour ainsi dire avec la l^geratd d'un isard ou d'un chamois ! Au rdcit que ja fais de cette excursion sous les eaux, je sens bien que je ne pourrai etre vrai- semblable ! Je suis pourtant I'historien des choses d'apparence impossible, mais qui sont rdelles, JULES VERNE 167 incontestables. Je n'ai point revd. J'ai vu et senti ! Deux heures apres avoir quittd le Nautilus, nous avions franchi la ligne des arbres, et k cent pieds au-dessus de nos tetes se dressait le pic de la montagne dont la projection faisait ombre sur r^clatante irradiation du versant oppose. Quel- ques arbrisseaux pdtrifids couraient 9k et Ik en zigzags menagants. Les poissons se levaient en masse sous nos pas comma des oiseaux surpris dans les hautes herbes. La masse rocheuse ctait creusde d'impdndtrables anfractuositds, de grottes profondes, d'insondables trous, au fond desquels j'entendais remuer des choses formid- ables. Le sang me refluait 'usqu'au coeur, quand j'apercevais une antenne dnornie qui me barrait la route, ou quelque pince effrayante se refermant avec bruit, dans ronibre des cavitds ! Des milliers de points lumincux brillaient au milieu des tdnebres. C'dtaient les yeux de crustacds gigan- tesques, tapis dans leur taniere, des homards gdants se redressant comme des hallebardiers et remuant leurs pattes avec un cliquetis de ferraille, des crabes tilanesques, braquds commc des canons sur leurs affiits, et des poulpes effroyables entre- laqant leurs tcntacules, broussaille vivante de serpents. Jules I'er/ie. 1 68 THE CALL OV THE SEA (From TAree Cruises of the " Blake'") n^HE monotony, dreariness, and desolation of the deeper parts of this submarine scenery can scarcely be realised. The most barren terres- trial districts must seem diversified when compared with the vast expanse of ooze which covers the deeper parts of the ocean, — a monotony only re- lieved by the fall of the dead carcasses of pelagic animals and plants, which slowly find their way from the surface to the bottom, and supply the principal food for the scanty fauna found living there. Nearer to the continental masses we find the slopes inhabited by a more abundant and more varied fauna, increasing in variety and numbers according to the amount of food available. But no matter how varied or how abundant life may be, the general aspect of the slopes must be dreary in the extreme, and can only be compared in character to those higher mountain regions where we find occasional fields of wild flowers and low shrubs, or to those zones lying beyond the limits of forests, where vegetation is scanty and poor and forms but a slight covering to the earth's surface. It is true that along the continental slopes, where there is an ample supply of food, we rind animal life in great abundance, and there are un- ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 1 69 doubtedly long stretches of bottom carpeted by the most brilliantly colored animals, packed quite as closely as they are on banks in shallower waters, or near low-water mark. But the scene is much less varied than on land ; the absence of plants in deep water makes great diversity of scenery im- possible. The place of luxuriant forests with the accompanying underbrush and their inhabitants is only indifferently supplied by large anthozoa and huge cuttlefishes, or nearer in shore, within moderate depths, by sea-weed and the pelagic forests of giant kelp. It requires but little imagination to notice the contrasts, as we pass from the shallow littoral regions of the sea, — full of sunlight and move- ment, and teeming with animal and vegetable life, — into the dimly lighted, but richly populated con- tinental zone ; and further to imagine the gradual decrease of the continental fauna, as it fades into the calm, cold, dark, and nearly deserted abyssal regions of the oceanic floors at a distance from the continents. It is like going from the luxuriant vegetation of the tropical shore line — the region of palms, bananas, and mango — into the cooler zone of oaks and pines, until we pass out into the higher levels, with their stunted vegetation and scanty fauna, and finally into the colder climate of the bleak regions of perpetual snow. Alexander A^assiz. 170 THE CALL OF THE SEA (From A Sack of Shakitigs) T T would be an awful country to view, this sud- denly exposed floor of the sea. A barren land of weird outline, of almost unimaginable com- plexity of contour, but without any beauty such as is bestowed upon the dry earth by the kindly sun. For its beauty depends upon the sea, whose prolific waters are peopled with life so abundantly that even the teeming earth is barren as compared with the ocean. But at its greatest depths all the re- searches that man has been able to prosecute go to prove that there is little life. The most that goes on there is a steady accumulation of the dead husks of once living organisms settling slowly down to form who knows what new granites, marbles, porphyries, against the time when another race of a reorganised earth shall need them. Here there is nothing fanciful, for if we know anything at all of prehistoric times, it is that what is now high land, not to say merely dry land, was once lying cold and dormant at the bottom of the sea, being prepared throughout who can say what unrealisable periods of time for the use and enjoyment of its present lords. Not until we leave the rayless gloom, the incalculable pressures and universal cold of those tremendous depths, do we find the sea-floor beginning to abound with life. It may even be doubted whether anything of man's handi- HENRY FIELDING 171 work, such as there is about a ship foundering in mid-ocean, would ever reach in a recognisable form the bottom of the sea at a depth of more than 2000 fathoms. There is an idea, popularly current among seafarers, that sunken ships in the deep sea only go down a certain distance, no matter what their build or how ponderous their cargo. Having reached a certain stratum, they then drift about, slowly disintegrating, derelicts of the depths, swarming with strange denizens, the shadowy fleets of the lost and loved ;md mourned. F. T. Bidlen. Abundance of Fish in the Sea "^^ (From the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon) /^F all the animal foods with which man is furnished, there are none so plenty as fish. A little rivulet, that glides almost unperceivcd through a vast tract of rich land, will support more hundreds with the flesh of its inhabitants than the meadow will nourish individuals. But if this be true of rivers, it is much truer of the seashores, which abound with such immense variety of fish that the curious fisherman, after he hath made his draught, often culls only the daintiest part and leaves the rest of his prey to perish on the shore. If this be true, it would appear, I think, that 172 THE CALL OF THE SEA there is nothing which may be had in such abund- ance, and consequently so cheap, as fish, of which Nature seems to have provided such inexhaustible stores with some peculiar design. In the produc- tion of terrestrial animals she proceeds with such slowness that, in the larger kind, a single female seldom produces more than one a year, and this again requires three, four, or five years more to bring it to perfection. And though the lesser quadrupeds, those of the M'ild kind particularly, with the birds, do multiply much faster, yet can none of these bear any proportion with the aquatic animals, of whom every female matrix is furnished with an annual offspring almost exceeding the power of numbers, and which, in many instances at least, a single year is capable of bringing to some degree of maturity. Henry Fielding. VIII SEA FIGHTS "We gave her three pieces of ordnance only, and struck down her mizen mast, and then boarded sword in hand, but never had need to strike a blow ; and before we left her, one of her own boys had changed her name, and re-christened her tlie ' Cacaplata'." "Glory, glory! Cowards they are, as I told them. I told them they never could stand the Devon mastiffs ! " Charles Kingsley (from Westward Ho!). Salamis (480 B.C.) '^:> (From the History ; Bohn, trans.) Al /"HEN the signal was given to the Greeks, first of all, turning their prows against the barbarians, they contracted their sterns inwardly to the middle ; and when the second signal was given, they commenced the attack, though enclosed in a narrow space, and that prow to prow. On this occasion they took thirty ships of the barbarians, and Philaon, son of Chersis, the brother of Gorgus, king of the Salaminians, a man highly esteemed in their army. Lycomedes, son of yEschreus, an Athenian, was the first of the Greeks who took a ship from the enemy, and he received the palm of valour. But night, coming on, separated the com- batants, who in this engagement fought with doubt- ful success. The Greeks returned to Artemisium, and the barbarians to Apheta-, having fought with far different success than they expected. In this engagement, Antidorus, a Lemnian, was the only one of the Greeks in the king's service who went over to the Grecians ; and on that account the Athenians presented him with lands in Salamis. When night came on— it was now the middle of summer— heavy rain fell through the whole night, '75 176 THE CALL OF THE SEA and violent thunder about Pelion ; but the dead bodies and pieces of wreck were driven to Aphetfe, and got entangled round the prows of the ships and impeded the blades of the oars. But the soldiers who were on board, when they heard the thunder, were seized with terror, expecting that they must certainly perish, into such calamities had they fallen. For before they had recovered breath, after the wreck and tempest that had occurred off Pelion, a fierce engagement followed ; and after the engagement, impetuous rain and mighty torrents rushing into the sea, and violent thunder. Such was the night to them. But to those who had been appointed to sail round Euboea, this same night proved so much the more wild, in that it fell upon them while they were in the open sea ; and the end was grievous to them ; for as they were sailing, the storm and rain overtook them when they were near the Ccela of Eubcea, and, being driven by the wind, and not knowing where they were driven, they were dashed upon the rocks. All this was done by the deity, that the Persian might be brought to an equality with the Grecian, or at least not be greatly superior. Thus they perished near the Coela of Eubosa. The barbarians at Aphetaj, when, to their great joy, day dawned, kept their ships at rest and were content, after they had suffered so much, to remain quiet for the present. I'ut three-and- fifty HERODOTUS 1 77 Attic ships came to reinforce the Greeks ; and both these by their arrival gave them additional courage, as did the news that came at the same time, that those of the barbarians who were sailing round Euboea had all perished in the late storm ; therefore, having waited to the same hour, they set sail and attacked the Cilician ships, and, having destroyed them, as soon as it was night they sailed back to Artemisium. On the third day, the commanders of the bar- barians, indignant at being insulted by so few ships, and fearing the displeasure of Xerxes, no longer waited for the Greeks to begin the battle ; but, encouragmg one another, got under weigh about the middle of the day. It happened that these actions by sea and those by hind at Thermopyhv; took place on the same days ; and the whole struggle for those at sea was for the Euripus, as for those with Leonidas to guard the pass. The one party encouraging each other not to suffer the barbarians to enter Greece ; and the other, to de- stroy the Grecian forces and make themselves masters of the channel. When the barbarians, having formed in line, sailed onwards, the Grecians remained still at Artemisium ; but the barljarians, having drawn up their ships in tlie form of a crescent, encircled them as if they would take them ; whereupon the N 178 THE CALL OF THE SEA Greeks sailed out to meet them, and engaged. In this battle they were nearly equal to one another ; for the fleet of Xerxes, by reason of its magnitude and number, imjocded itself, as the ships incom- moded and ran foul of one another ; however, they continued to fight and would not yield, for they were ashamed to be put to flight by a few ships. Accordingly many ships of the Grecians perished and many men ; and of the barbarians a much greater number of both ships and men. Having fought in this manner, they separated from each other. In this engagement the Egyptians sig- nalised themselves among the forces of Xerxes ; for they both achieved other great actions and took five Grecian ships with their crews. On the part of the Greeks, the Athenians signalised them- selves on this day, and, among the Athenians, Clinias, son of Alcibiades ; who at his own expense joined the fleet with two hundred men and a ship of his own. . . . The barbarians being turned to flight, and sail- ing away towards Phalerus, the ^^iginitae, waylay- ing them in the strait, performed actions worthy of record. For the Athenians in the rout ran down both those ships that resisted and those that fled ; and the JEg\n\t?e, those that sailed away from the battle : so that when any escaped, the Athenians, being borne violently on, they fell into the hands of the ^ginitie. At this time there happened to HERODOTUS I 79 meet together the ship of Themistocles, giving chase to one of the enemy, and that of Polycritus, son of Crius, an ^tginetan, bearing down upon a Sidonian ship, the same that had taken the i^ginetan ship, which was keeping watch ofif Sciathus, and on board of which sailed Pytheas, son of Ischenous, whom, though covered with wounds, the Persians kept in the ship from admira- tion of his valour. The Sidonian ship that carried him about was taken with the Persians on board, so that Pytheas, by this means, returned safe to Aig'ma.. But when Polycritus saw the Athenian ship, he knew it, seeing the admiral's ensign ; and, shouting to Themistocles, he railed at him, up- braiding him with the charge of Medism brought against the /Eginit;u. Polycritus accordingly, as he was attacking the ship, threw out these re- proaches against Themistocles. But the bar- barians, whose ships survived, fled and arrived at Phalerus, under the protection of the land forces. . . . When the sea-fight was ended, the Greeks, having hauled on shore at Salamis all the wrecks that still happened to be there, held themselves ready for another battle, expecting that the king would still make use of the ships that survived. Herodotus, l8o THE CALL OF THE SEA (From The Pasiatis ; Bohn) T7OR a Greek that had come from the host of the Athenians told thy son Xerxes, this, that, when the gloom of murky night should come, the Greeks would not remain, but, springing on the benches of their vessels, would severally, in different directions, save their lives by stealthy flight. And he, as soon as he heard it, not aware of the stratagem of the Greek, nor of the jealousy of the gods, publishes this order to all his cap- tains, that when the sun should have ceased to illumine the earth with his rays and darkness tenant the temple of the firmament, they should draw up the squadron of the ships in three lines, to guard the outlets and the murmuring passes of the sea, and others in a circle round the Isle of Ajax ; so that if the Greeks should elude fatal destruction by discovering any escape for their ships by stealth, it was decreed that they should all be deprived of their heads. To this effect he spake from a frantic spirit ; for he knew not that which was preordained of the gods. And they, without disorder, and with obedient mind, both provided supper for themselves, and the mariner lashed his oar to the well-fitted rowlock. And when the light of the sun had waned, and night >ESCHYLUS l8l had come on, every man, master of an oar, went on board his ship, and every one that had sway over arms : and one line of ships of war cheered on another line, and they made sail as each had been appointed, and all the live-long night the commanders of the ships were keeping the whole naval host occupied in sailing about. And night withdrew, and the force of the Greeks by no means made a stealthy escape in any direction. But when Day, drawn by white steeds, had occu- pied the whole earth, of radiance beautiful to behold, first of all a shout from the Greeks greeted Echo like a song, and Echo from the island-rock at the same instant shouted forth an inspiring cry : and terror fell on all the barbarians, baulked of their purpose; for not as in flight were the Greeks, then chaunting the solemn p;can, but speeding on to the fight with gallant daring of soul. And the trumpet, with its clang, inflamed their whole line ; and forthwith, with the collision of the dashing oar, at the word of command they smote the roaring brine. And quickly were they conspicuous to view. The right wing, well marshalled, led on foremost in good order, and, secondly, their whole force was coming forth against us, and we could at the same time hear a mighty shout: SONS OF THK GRKKKS I ON ! FREE YOUR COUNTRY AND FREE YOUR CHILDREN, YOUR WIVE.S, THE AIlODES TOO OF THE GODS OF YOUR FATHERS, AND THE l82 THE CALL OF THE SEA TOMBS OF YOUR ANCESTORS ; NOW IS THE CON- FLICT FOR THEM ALL ! And, sooth to say, a murmur of the Persian tongue met them from our line, and no longer was it the moment to delay, but forthwith ship dashed her brazen prow at ship. And a Grecian vessel commenced the engagement, and breaks off the whole of a figure-head of a Phccni- cian ship ; and each commander severally directed his bark against another of the enemy's. At first, indeed, the torrent of the Persian armament bore up against them : but when the multitude of our ships were crowded in the strait and no assist- ance could be given to one another, they were struck by their own brazen beaks and were smash- ing their entire equipment of oars, and the Grecian vessels, not without science, were smiting them in a circle on all sides, and the hulls of our vessels were upturned, and the sea was no longer to behold, filled as it was with wrecks and the slaughter of men. The shores, too, and the rugged rocks were filled with the dead ; and every ship, as many as ever there were of the barbaric armament, was rowed in flight without order. But the Greeks kept striking, hacking us as it were tunnies, or any draught of fishes, with fragments of oars and splinters of wrecks ; and wailing filled the ocean brine with shrieks, until the eye of murky night removed it. But for the multitude of our woes — no, not if I should recite them for ten days, could itSCHYLUS 183 I complete the tale for thee. For be thou well assured of this, that there never fell in a single day a multitude of men of such number. . . . There is a certain island lying off the shores of Salamis, small, a dangerous station for ships, which Pan, who delights in the dance, haunts on its beach. Thither Xerxes sends these men, in order that, when the foemen, wandering out of their ships, should make their escape to the island, they might slay the soldiery of the Greeks, an easy prey, and rescue their comrades from the streams of the sea, ill knowing of the future ; for when God gave the glory of the naval battle to the Greeks, on that ver)' day having fortified their bodies in the armour well wrought of brass, they leaped out of their vessels and encompassed the whole island around, so that they were at a loss whither they should betake themselves ; for often were they smitten by stones from their hands, and arrows, falling on them from the bowstring, de- stroyed them. And at last, having charged them with one onslaught, they smite, they hew in pieces the limbs of the wretches, until they had utterly destroyed the life of all of them. And Xerxes shrieked aloud, when he saw the depth of his calamities ; for he had a seat that afforded a clear prospect of the whole armament, a high hill near the ocean brine. ^'Eschylus. 184 THE CALL OF THE SEA Syracuse (b.c. 413) <:>• '*=2>' ''^i' (From The History of the Peloponnesian War', Bohn, trans.) 'T^HE Syracusans and their allies, having pre- viously put out with pretty nearly the same number of ships as before, proceeded to keep guard with part of them at the passage out, and also round the circumference of the whole harbour, that they might fall upon the Athenians on all sides at once, while their troops also at the same time came to their aid at whatever part their vessels might put in to shore. The commanders of the Syracusan fleet were Sicanus and Agatharcus, each occupying a wing of the whole force, with Pythen and the Corinthians in the centre. When the Athenians came up to the bar, in the first rush with which they charged they got the better of the ships posted at it, and endeavoured to break the fastenings. Afterwards, when the Syracusans and their allies bore down upon them from all quarters, the engagement was going on no longer at the bar alone, but over the harbour also ; and an obstinate one it was, such as none of the previous ones had been. For great eagerness for the attack was exhibited by the seamen on both sides, when the command was given ; and there was much counter-manoeuvring on the part of the masters. THUCYDIDES 1 85 and rivalry with each other ; while the soldiers on board exerted themselves, when vessel came in collision with vessel, that the operations on deck might not fall short of the skill shown by others. Indeed everyone, whatever the duty assigned him, made every effort that he might himself in each case appear the best man. And as a great number of ships were engaged in a small compass (for indeed they were the largest fighting fleets in the narrowest space that had ever been known, since both of them together fell little short of two hundred), the attacks made with the beaks were few, as there was no means of backing water, or cutting through the enemy's line ; but chance collisions were more frequent, just as one ship might happen to run into anotlier, either in flying from or attacking a second. So long as a vessel was coming up to the charge, those on her decks plied their javelins, arrows, and stones in abundance against her ; but when they came to close quarters, the heavy armed marines, fighting hand to hand, endeavoured to board each others' ships. In many cases, too, it happened, through want of room, that on one side they were charging an enemy, and on the other were being charged them- selves, and that two ships, and sometimes even more, were by compulsion entangled round one. And thus the masters had to guard against some, and to concert measures against others— not one 1 86 THE CALL OF THE SEA thing at a time, but many things on every side — while the great din from such a number of ships coming into coUision both spread dismay and prevented their hearing what the boatswains said. For many were the orders given and the shouts raised by those officers on each side, both in the discharge of their duty, and from their present eagerness for the battle : while they cried out to the Athenians " to force the passage," and now, if ever they meant to do it hereafter, to exert them- selves heartily for a safe return to their country ; and to the Syracusans and their allies, "that it would be a glorious achievement for them to prevent the enemy's escape, and by gaining the victory to confer honour on their respective countries." The commanders, moreover, on each side, if they saw any captain in any part un- necessarily rowing astern, called out on him by name and asked him, on the side of the Athenians, " whether they were retreating because they con- sidered the land, which was in the possession of ■ their bitterest enemies, as more their own than the sea, which had been won with no small trouble?" on that of the Syracusans, " whether they were themselves flying from the flying Athenians, whom they knew for certain to be anxious to escape from them in any way whatever?" The troops on shore, too, on both sides, when the sea-fight was so equally balanced, suffered a THUCYDIDES 1S7 great agony and conflict of feelings ; those of the country being ambitious now of still greater honour, while their invaders were afraid of faring even worse than at present. For, since the Athenians' all was staked on their fleet, their fear for the future was like none they had ever felt before ; and from the unequal nature of the engagement they were also compelled to have an unequal view of it from the beach. . . . After the battle had been thus obstinately dis- puted, and many ships and men destroyed on both sides, the Syracusans and allies, having gained the victory, took up their wrecks and dead, and then sailed away to the city, and erected a trophy. The Athenians, from the extent of their present misery, did not so much .is think about their dead or their wrecks, or of asking permission to take them up, but wished to retreat immediately during the night. Demosthenes, however, went to Nicias, and expressed it as his opinion that they should still man their remaining ships, and force their passage out, if they could, in the morning ; alleging that they still had left more ships fit for service than the enemy ; for the Athenians had about sixty remaining, while their adversaries had less than fifty. But when Nicias agreed with this opinion, and they wished to man them, the seamen would not embark, through being dismayed at their defeat, and thinking that they could not now 1 88 THE CALL OF THE SEA gain a victory. And so they all now made up their minds to retreat by land. Thucydides. Sluys (1340) -o •<:> ^c> ^;> (From Chronicles) T^HE French king being aduertised, that the king of England meant shortlie to returne into Flanders with a great power, in purpose to inuade the realme of France on that side, assem- bled a nauie of foure hundred ships vnder the leading of three expert capteins of the warres by sea, as sir Hugh Kiriell, sir Peter Bahuchet, and a Geneweis named Barbe Noir, appointing them to the coasts of Flanders to defend the king of England from landing there, if by any meanes they might. These three capteins or admerals came and laie with their ships in the hauen of Slujse, for that it was supposed the king of England would arriue there, as his meaning was indeed, wherevpon when his men, ships, and prouisions were once readie in the moneth of June, he tooke the sea with two hundred saile, and directing his course towards Flanders, there came vnto him the lord Robert Morley, with the north nauie of England, so that then he had in all about three hundred saile, or (as other saie) two hundred and three score. The French nauie laie betwixt Sluise and Blancbergh HOLINSHED 1 89 SO that when the king of England approched, either part descried other, & therewith prepared them to battell. The king of England staied, till the sunne which at the first was in his face, came somewhat westward, and so had it vpon his backe, that it should not hinder the sight of his people, and so therewith did set vpon his enimies with great manhood, who likewise verie stoutlie in- countered him, by reason whereof insued a sore and deadlie fight betwixt them. The nauies on both sides were diuided into three battels. On the English part, the earles of Glocester, North- ampton, and Huntington, who was admerall of the fleet that belonged to the cinque ports, and the lord Robert Morley, admerall of the northerne nauie, had the guiding of the foreward, bearing themselues right valiantlie, so that at length the Englishmen hauing the aduantage, not onlie of the sunne, but also of the wind and tide, so fortunatlie, that the P'rench fleet was driuen into the streights of the hauen, in such wise that neither the souldiers nor mariners could hclpe themselves, in somuch that both lieauen, sea, and wind seemed all to haue conspired against the Frenchmen. And herewith manie shi|)s of Flan- ders ioining tlicmsclucs with the English fleet, in the end the Frenchmen wore van(|uislied, siainc and taken, their ships being also cither taken bowged, or broken. 190 THE CALL OF THE SEA When night was come vpon them, there were thirtie French ships, that yet had not entred the battell, the which sought by couert of the night to haue stolne awaie, and one of them being a mightie great vessell, called the James of Deepe, would haue taken awaie with hir a ship of Sandwich that belonged to the prior of Canturburie ; bnt by the helpe of the earle of Huntington, after they had fought all the night till the next morning, the Englishmen at length preuailed, and taking that great huge ship of Deepe, found in hir aboue foure hundred dead bodies. To conclude, verie few of the French ships escaped, except some of their smaller vessels, and certeine gallies with their admerall Barbenoir, who in the beginning of the battell got foorth of the hauen, aduising the other capteins to doo the like, thereby to auoid the danger which they wilfullie imbraced. There died in this battell fought (as some write) on mid- summer dale, in the yeare aforesaid, of French- men to the number of 30,000, of Englishmen about 4000, or (as other haue that liued in those daies) not past 400, amongst whom there were foure knights of great nobilitie, as sir Thomas Monhermere, sir Thomas Latimer, sir John Boteler, and sir Thomas Poinings. It is said also, that the king himselfe was hurt in the thigh. The two English ships that had beene taken the yeere before, the Edward and the VASCO DA GAM A 19I Christopher, were recouered at this time, amongst other of the French ships that were taken there. Sir Peter Bahuchet was hanged vpon a crosse pole fastened to a mast of one of the ships. Through the wilfulnesse of this man, the Frenchmen receiued this losse (as the French chronicles re- port) bicause he kept the nauie so long within the hauen, till they were so inclosed by the English- men, that a great number of the Frenchmen could neuer come to strike stroke, nor to vse the shot of their artiilerie, but to the hurt of their fellows. Howsouer it was, the Englishmen got a famous victorie, to the great comfort of themselues, and discomfort of their aduersaries. The king of England, after he had thus vanquished his enimies, remained on the sea by the space of three daies, and then comming on land, went to (jant, where he was receiued of the queene with great ioy and gladnesse. Ilolinshed. Vasco da Gama engagfes the Calicut Fleet (1503) -^^i.- 'Qy {From The Three Voyai^es ; Ilakiuyt Soc, trans.) HEN they had reached as far forward as the Moorish ships, all, recommending themselves to the Lord, discharged their guns, all firing at the flagship ; and those which passed forward went W 192 THE CALL OF THE SEA against the other ships, for it was not possible to miss ; and they made such haste to load again that they loaded the guns with bags of powder, which they had ready for this purpose made to measure, so that they could load again very speedily. But with this first discharge our men made such good work that they brought down the mast of the flag- ship, which fell over and stove in the ship and killed many Moors ; and another shot hit it full and passed through near the poop, which it shattered much and killed and wounded many people ; of the other large ships three were stove in low down, so that they foundered and went to the bottom, many people remaining on the water swimming, who betook themselves to the paraos and caught hold of the oars, so that they could not row, and they could not get out of the way of their own ships, which came against them and capsized them, so that they so much embarrassed one another that they all remained stuck close to each other, and our ships fired into them for a considerable time, for they fired into the thick with their heavy guns, so that they shattered many in pieces, killing many people, on account of which there were shrieks and cries amongst the Moors. The ships brailed up their sails to the yards and discharged all their guns. The Moors, although they were in such straits, fired much artillery which they carried, and much of it threw shot like VASCO DA GAMA I 93 bowls, and they did not fight any other way. Thus embairassed, the wind drove them out to sea, so that the ships lengthened their distance from them, always doing them much damage with the artillery, because our shot was much more powerful than theirs. As at this time the ships of burden had come up, Vicente Sodrd loosed his sails and ran on after the caravels, which were now reach- ing the other squadron of the Moors, the captain of which was the Moor Coja Kasim, which con- sisted of more than a hundred sail, but the greater part of them were sambuks, which he had collected to make a show of a great fleet ; and these, seeing the ships and caravels coming, as they left the others already routed, were greatly afraid. But the Moor held on his course with all his large ships straight for our ships to board them, and Vicente Sodrd did not turn aside because he went with all his artillery ready, and Ruy Lorenzo Kavasco and Vasco Fernandes Tinoco, who were in the other ships, also went prepared. As the wind freshened and was better for our ships, they made straight for the Moorish flagship which came foremost and in the centre of the others, and before closing there was a discharge of many shot ; and as the flagship carried much artillery, one shot entered the ship of Vasco Tinoco, and killed him and two men, wounding others with splinters of wood, but a shot from the Portuguese ship took the flagship O 194 THE CALL OF THE SEA obliquely and threw it into disorder, killing many men, because all the Moors showed themselves above, but our men remained below, and none showed except the gunners and the men who assisted them. The Portuguese ships kept their steerage way, keeping aloof from the Moorish ships, passing amongst them all, doing wonders with their artillery, firing both broadsides and their poop and forecastle guns, as in all directions it was not possible to miss ; the Moors also fired much artillery which they carried, but they were small guns, and when they passed near our ships they covered them with arrows, but they did not hurt the men, who lay hid, and so they passed through all the fleet of the Moors, and when they had passed the ships and sails were covered with arrows, and there were many holes in the sails and much rigging broken ; but the Moorish ships were much ill-treated, they were shattered and stove in, and many had the masts and yards shattered, which was the greatest advantage our men obtained. Vasco da Gama. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY I 95 Lepanto (1571) ^^> ^^i' ^=^ (From The Rise of the Dutch Republic) OIX hundred vessels of war met face to face. Rarely in history had so gorgeous a scene of martial array been witnessed. An October sun gilded the thousand beauties of an Ionian land- scape. Athens and Curinlh were l:)ehind the com- batants, the mountains of Alexandei-'s Macedon rose in the distance ; the rock of Sappho and the heights of Actium were before their eyes. Since the day when the world had been lost and won beneath that famous promontory, no such combat as the one now approaching had been fought upon the waves. The chivalrous young commander despatched energetic messages to his fellow chief- tains, and now that it was no longer possible to elude the encounter, the martial ardor of the allies was kindled. The Venetian High-Admiral replied with words of enthusiasm. Colonna, lieutenant of the league, answered his chief in the language of Saint Peter: "Though I die, yet will I not deny thee." The fleet was arranged in three divisions. The Ottomans, not drawn up in crescent form, as usual, had the same triple dis|)osition. llarl)arigo and the other Venetians commanded on the left, J<;hn 196 THE CALL OF THE SEA Andrew Doria on the right, while Don John him- self and Colonna were in the centre. Crucifix in hand, the High-Admiral rowed from ship to ship, exhorting generals and soldiers to show themselves worthy of a cause which he had persuaded himself was holy. Fired by his eloquence and by the sight of the enemy, his hearers answered with eager shouts, while Don John returned to his ship, knelt upon the quarter-deck, and offered a prayer. He then ordered the trumpets to sound the assault, commanded his sailing-master to lay him along- side the Turkish Admiral, and the battle began. The Venetians, who were first attacked, destroyed ship after ship of their assailants after a close and obstinate contest, but Barbarigo fell dead ere the sunset, with an arrow through his brain. Mean- time the action, immediately after the first onset, had become general. From noon till evening the battle raged, with a carnage rarely recorded in history. Don John's own ship lay yard-arm and yard-arm with the Turkish Admiral, and exposed to the fire of seven large vessels besides. It was a day when personal audacity, not skilful tactics, was demanded, and the imperial bastard showed the metal he was made of. The Turkish Admiral's ship was destroyed, his head exposed from Don John's deck upon a pike, and the trophy became the signal for a general panic and a complete victory. By sunset the battle had been won. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY X97 Of nearly three hundred Turkish galleys, but fifty made their escape. From twenty-five to thirty thousand Turks were slain, and perhaps ten thou- sand Christians. The galley-slaves on both sides fought well, and the only beneficial result of the victory was the liberation of several thousand Chris- tian captives. It is true that their liberty was purchased with the lives of a nearly equal number of Christian soldiers, and by the reduction to slavery of almost as many thousand Mussuimen, duly distributed among the Christian victors. Many causes contributed to this splendid triumph. The Turkish ships, inferior in number, were also worse manned than those of their adversaries, and their men were worse armed. Every bullet of the Christians told on muslin turbans and embroidered tunics, while the arrows of the Moslems fell harmless on the casques and corslets of their foes. The Turks, too, had committed the fatal error of fight- ing upon a lee shore. Having no sea room, and being repelled in their first onset, many galleys were driven upon tho rorks. to ho destroyed with all their crews. /oA/t Lothrop ^f alley. igS THE CALL OF THE SEA The Spanish Armada (1588) -^c^ •'O (From The History of England) A LL being thus in order, the Prince of Parma ^^ ready to embark, the paternal admonition to the Enghsh nation to commit treason prepared for circulation, and the last touches added to the completeness of the fleet in the Tagus, the Duke of Medina Sidonia sailed from Lisbon on the I9th-29th of May. The northerly breeze which prevails on the coast of Portugal was unusually strong. The galleons standing high out of the water, and carrying small canvas in proportion to their size, worked badly to windward. They were three weeks in reaching Finisterre, where, the wind having freshened to a gale, they were scattered, some standing out to sea, some into the Bay of Biscay. Their orders, in the event of such a casualty, had been to make for Ferrol. The wind shifting suddenly to the west, those that had gone into the Bay could not immediately reach it, and were driven into Santander. The officers, how- ever, were, on the whole, well satisfied with the qualities which the ships had displayed. A mast or two had been sprung, a few yards and bow- sprits had been carried away ; but beyond loss of time there had been no serious damage. The weather moderating, the fleet was again JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 1 99 collected in the Bay of Fenol by the 6th- 1 6th of July. All repairs were completed by the iith-2ist, and the next day, the I2th-22nd, the Armada took leave of Spain for the last time. The scene as the fleet passed out of the harbour must have been singularly beautiful. It was a treacherous interval of real summer. The early sun was lighting the long chain of the Gallician mountains, marking with shadows the cleft defiles, and shining softly on the white walls and vine- yards of Corufia. The wind was light, and fall- ing towards a calm ; the great galleons drifted slowly with the tide on the purple water, the long streamers trailing from the trucks, the red crosses, the emblem of the crusade, shewing bright upon the hanging sails. The fruit boats were bringing off the last fresh supplies, and the pinnaces hasten- ing to the ships with the last loiterers on shore. Out of thirty thousand men who that morning stood upon the decks of the proud Armada, twenty thousand and more were never again to see the hills of Spain. Of the remnant who in two short months crept back ragged and torn, all but a few hundreds returned only to die. The Spaniards, though a great people, were usually over conscious of their greatness, and boasted too loudly of their fame and prowess ; but among the soldiers and sailors of the doomed expedition against England, the national vain- 200 THE CALL OF THE SEA glory was singularly silent. They were the flower of the country, called and chosen over the entire Peninsula, and they were going with a modest nobility upon a service which they knew to be dangerous, but which they believed to be peculiarly sacred. Every one, seaman, officer, and soldier, had confessed and communicated before he went on board. Gambling, swearing, profane language of all kinds had been peremptorily for- bidden. Private quarrels and differences had been made up or suspended. The loose women who accompanied Spanish armies, and sometimes Spanish ships to sea, had been ordered away, and no unclean thing or person permitted to defile the Armada ; and in every vessel, and in the whole fleet, the strictest order was prescribed and observed. Medina Sidonia led the way in the San Martm^ showing lights at night, and firing guns when the weather was hazy. Mount's Bay was to be the next place of rendezvous if they were again separated. On the first evening the wind dropped to a calm. The morning after, the I3th-23rd, a fair fresh breeze came up from the south and south-west ; the ships ran flowingly before it ; and in two days and nights they had crossed the bay, and were off Ushant. The fastest of the pinnaces was dispatched from thence to Parma, with a letter bidding him expect the Duke's immediate coming. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDP: 20I But they had now enteicd tlie latitude of the storms which tlirough the whole season had raged round the English shore. The same night a south-west gale overtook them. They lay-to, not daring to run further. The four galleys unable to keep the sea were driven in upon the French coast, and wrecked. The Santa Ana, a galleon of eight hundred tons, went down, carrying with her ninety seamen, three hundred soldiers, and fifty thousand ducats in gold. The weather was believed to be under the peculiar care of God, and this first misfortune was of evil omen for the future. The storm lasted two days, and then the sky cleared, and, again gathering into order, they proceeded on their way. On the I9th-29th they were in the mouth of the Channel. At daybreak on the morning of the 2olh 30th the Lizard was under their Ice, and an English fishing boat was hanging near them, counting their numbers. They gave chase ; but the boat shot away down wind and disappeared. They captured another an iiour or two later, from which they learnt the English fleet was in Plymouth, and Medina Sidonia called a council of war, to consider whether they should go in, and fall upon it while at anchor. I'hilip's orders, however, were peremptory tli.it they should turn neither right nor left, and make straight for Margate roads and I'arma. The Duke was unenterprising, and consciously un- 202 THE CALL OF THE SEA equal to his work ; and already bending under his responsibilities he hesitated to add to them. Had he decided otherwise it would have made no difference, for the opportunity was not allowed him. Long before the Spaniards saw the Lizard they had themselves been seen, and on the evening of the igth-agth, the beacons along the coast had told England that the hour of its trial had come. . . . . . . Again a council was held. The sickness had become frightful. Those who load escaped unwounded were falling ill from want and cold, and the wounded were dying by hundreds, the incessant storms making care and attention im- possible. Calderon and the French pilot insisted that at all costs and hazards they must keep off the Irish coast. Diego Florez, distressed for the misery of the men, to whose sufferings want of water had become a fearful aggravation, imagined that along the west shore there must be a harbour somewhere ; and that they would find rest and shelter among a hospitable Catholic people. The Bishop of Killaloe, a young Fitzmaurice, and a number of Irish friars were in the fleet. Diego Florez had possibly heard them speak of their country and countrymen, and there were fishing connexions between Cadiz and Valencia and Galway, which he and many others must have JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 203 known of, though they had not been on the coast in person. But the Irish themselves were with Alonzo da Leyva, and Sidonia happily took the opinion of the pilots. The day was fine and the sick were divided ; those which could be moved were transferred wherever there was most room for them, and as Calderon passed to and fro among the galleons with his medicines and his arrowroot, he was received everywhere with the eager question, where was Alonzo da Leyva ? There was scarcely a man who did not forget his own wretchedness in anxiety for the idol of them all. The calm had been but an interlude in the storm. The same night the wild west wind came down once more, and for eleven consecutive days they went on in their miser)', unable to communi- cate except by signals, holding to the ocean as far as their sailing powers would let them, and seeing galleon after galleon, Oquendos among them, fall- ing away to leeward amidst driving squalls and rain, on the vast rollers of the Atlantic. An island which he supposed to be ten leagues from the coast, Calderon [lassed dangerously near. It was perhaps Achill, whose tremendous clifTs fall sheer two thousand feet into the sea, or pciiiaps Innisbofin or Innishark. On the 4th-i4th of September, he, with Sidonia and fifty vessels, fifty- two ships only out of a hundred and fifty, leaking 204 THE CALL OF THE SEA through every seam, and their weary crews ready to he down and die from exhaustion, crawled past the Blaskets, and were out of danger. . . . . . . Another galleon of a thousand tons, named Our Lady of the Rosary^ which Calderon had watched sadly falling away before the waves, had also nearly weathered the headland of Kerry. She had all but escaped. Clear of the enormous cliffs of the Blasket Islands, she had no more to fear from the sea. Between the Blaskets and the main- land there is a passage which is safe in moderate weather, but the gale, which had slightly moder- ated, had risen again. The waves as they roll in from the Atlantic on the shallowing shores of Ireland boil among the rocks in bad weather with a fury unsurpassed in any part of the ocean. Strong tidal currents add to the danger, and when Our Lady of the Rosary entered the sound, it was a cauldron of boiling foam. There were scarcely hands to work the sails. Out of seven hundred, five hundred were dead, and most of the survivors were gentlemen, and before she was half-way through, she struck among the breakers upon the island. A maddened officer ran the pilot (a Genoese) through the heart, saying he had done it by 'treason.' Some of the gentlemen tried to launch a boat, but no boat could live for a moment in such a sea. The pilot's son lashed himself to a JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 205 plank, and was washed on shore alone of the whole company, and all the rest lay among cannon and doubloon chests amidst the rocks in Blasket Sound. . . . . . . Such was the fate of the brilliant chivalry of Spain ; the choicest representatives of the most illustrious families in Europe. They had rushed into the service with an emotion pure and generous as ever Templar to tlie Sepulchre of Christ. They believed that they were the soldiers of the Almighty. Pope and Bishop had commended them to the charge of the angels and the saints. The spell of the names of the Apostles had been shattered by English cannon. The elements, which were deemed God's peculiar province— as if to dis- enchant Christendom, were disenchantment pos- sible, of so fond an illusion — whirled them upon a shore which the waves of a hundred million years had made the most dangerous in the world ; there, as they crawled half drowned through the surf, to fall into the jaws of the Irish wolves. James Anthony i'roudf. 2o6 THE CALL OF THE SEA Death of Sir Richard Grenville o (From the Voyage to the East Indies; Hakluyt Soc, trans.) 'T'HE 13. of September the saide Armado arived at the Hand of Corno, where the Englishmen with about sixteene shippes as then lay, staying for the Spanish Fleete ; whereof some of the most parte were come, and there the English were in good hope to have taken them. But when they perceyved the King's Army to be strong, the Admirall being the Lorde Thomas Howard, com- maunded his Fleete not to fall upon them, nor any of them once to separate their shippes from him, unlesse he gave commission so to doe ; not- withstanding the Vice Admirall Sir Rychard Greenfield^ being in the ship called the Revenge went into the Spanish fleete, and shot among them, doing them great hurte, and thinking the rest of the company would have followed : which they did not, but left him there, and sayled away : the cause why could not be knowne ; which the Spaniardes perceiving, with seven or eight shippes they horded her, but she withstood them all, fight- ing with them at the least 12. houres together, and sunk two of them, one being a newe double Flie boat, of 12,000 tunnes, and Admirall of the Flie ' Read "Greenville." LINSCHOTEN 207 boates, the other a liiscaine : But in the ende by reason of the number that came uppon her she was taken, but to their great losse : for they had lost in fighting, and by drowning above 400. men, and of the EngHsh were slaine about a hundred. Sir Rychard Greenfield himselfe being wounded in his braine, whereof afterwards hee dyed. He was borne into the ship called the Saint Pdu/e, whtrem was the Admirall of the fleet Don Alonso de Barsan': there his woundes were drest by the Spanish Surgeons, but Don Alonso himselfe would neither see him, nor speake with him : all the rest of the Captaines and Gentlemen went to visite him, and to comfort him in his hard fortune, wondring at his courage, and stout heart, for that he shewed not any signe of faintnes nor changing of colour. But feeling the hower of death to approch, lice spake these wordes in Spanish, [&. said]: Here die I Richard Greenfield, with a ioyfull and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, yt. hath fought for his countrey, Queene, religion, and honor, whereby my soule most ioyfull departcth out of tliis bodic, and shall alwaies leave bchinde it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier, that hath done his dutie, as he was bound to doe. When he had finished these [or such other like] words, hee gave up the Ghost, with great and stout courage, and ' Read "Basan." 2oS THE CALL OF THE SEA no man could perceive any true signe of heavi- nesse in liim. Linschoten, La Hogue {1692) -<:i,. ^o ^i.- (From The History of England) 'T^OURVILLE had with him only his own squadron, consisting of forty-four ships of the line. But he had received positive orders to pro- tect the descent on England, and not to decline a battle. Though these orders had been given before it was known at Versailles that the Dutch and English fleets had joined, he was not disposed to take on himself the responsibility of disobedience. He still remembered with bitterness the reprimand which his extreme caution had drawn upon him after the fight of Beachy Head. He would not again be told that he was a timid and unenterpris- ing commander, that he had no courage but the vulgar courage of a common sailor. He was also persuaded that the odds against him were rather apparent than real. He believed, on the authority of James and Melfort, that the English seamen, from the flag officers down to the cabin boys, were Jacobites. Those who fought would fight with half a heart ; and there would probably be numerous desertions at the most critical moment. Animated by such hopes he sailed from Brest, THOMAS BABINGTON MACAUI.AY 209 Steered first towards the north-east, came in sight of the coast of Dorsetshire, and then struck across the Channel towards La Hogue, where the army which he was to convoy to England had already begun to embark on board of the transports. He was within a few leagues of Barfleur when, before sunrise on the morning of the nineteenth of May, he saw the great armament of the allies stretching along the eastern horizon. He determined to bear down on them. By eight the two lines of battle were formed ; but it was eleven before the firing began. It soon became plain that the English, from the Admiral downwards, were re- solved to do their duty. Russell had visited all his ships, and exhorted all his crews. "If your commanders play false," he said, " overboard with them, and with myself the first." There was no defection. There was no slackness. Carter was the first who broke the French line. He was struck by a splinter of one of his own yardarms, and fell dying on the deck. He would not be carried below. He would not let go his sword. " Fight the ship," were his last words : " fight the ship as long as she can swim." The battle lasted till four in the afternoon. The roar of the guns was distinctly heard more than twenty miles off by the army which was encamped on the coast of Normandy. During the earlier part of the day the wind was favourable to the French : they were P 2IO THE CALL OF THE SEA opposed to only half of the allied fleet ; and against that half they maintained the conflict with their usual courage and with more than their usual seamanship. After a hard and doubtful fight of five hours, Tourville thought that enough had been done to maintain the honour of the white flag, and began to draw off. But by this time the wind had veered, and was with the allies. They were now able to avail themselves of their great superiority of force. They came on fast. The retreat of the French became a flight. Tourville fought his own ship desperately. She was named, in allusion to Lewis's favourite emblem, the Royal Sun, and was widely renowned as the finest vessel in the world. It was reported among the English sailors that she was adorned with an image of the Great King, and that he appeared there, as he appeared in the Place of Victories, with vanquished nations in chains beneath his feet. The gallant ship, sur- rounded by enemies, lay like a great fortress on the sea, scattering death on every side from her hundred and four portholes. She was so formid- ably manned that all attempts to board her failed. Long after sunset, she got clear of her assailants, and, with all her scuppers spouting blood, made for the coast of Normandy. She had suffered so much that Tourville hastily removed his flag to a ship of ninety guns which was named the Ambitious. By this time his fleet was scattered THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 2 I I far over the sea. About twenty of his smallest ships made their escape by a road which was too perilous for any courage but the courage of despair. In the double darkness of night and of a thick sea fog, they ran, with all their sails spread, through the boiling waves and treacherous rocks of the Race of Alderney, and, by a strange good fortune, arrived without a single disaster at Saint Maloes. The pursuers did not venture to follow the fugitives into that terrible strait, the place of innumerable shipwrecks. . . . . . . Russell meanwhile was preparing for an attack. On the afternoon of the twenty-third of May all was ready. A flotilla consisting of sloops, of fireships, and of two hundred boats, was entrusted to the command of Rooke. The whole armament was in the highest spirits. The rowers, flushed by success, and animated by the ihouyht that they were going to fight under the eyes of the French and Irish troops who had been assembled f(jr the purpose of subjugating England, pulled manfully and with loud huzzas towards the six huge wooden castles which lay close to Fort Lisset. The French, thouyh an eminently brave people, have always been more liable to sutlden panics than their phlegmatic neighbours, the Eng- lish and (iermans. On this day there was a panic both in the fleet and in the army. I'fjurvillc 212 THE CALL OF THE SEA ordered his sailors to man their boats, and would have led them to encounter the enemy in the bay. But his example and his exhortations were vain. His boats turned round and fled in confusion. The ships were abandoned. The cannonade from Fort Lisset was so feeble and ill directed that it did no execution. The regiments on the beach, after wasting a few musket shots, drew oft'. The English boarded the men of war, set them on fire, and having performed this great service without the loss of a single life, retreated at a late hour with the retreating tide. The bay was in a blaze during the night ; and now and then a loud ex- plosion announced that the flames had reached a powder room or a tier of loaded guns. At eight the next morning the tide came back strong ; and with the tide came back Rooke and his two hundred boats. The enemy made a faint attempt to defend the vessels which were near Fort Saint Vaast. During a few minutes the batteries did some execution among the crews of our skiffs ; but the struggle was soon over. The French poured fast out of their ships on one side : the English poured in as fast on the other, and, with loud shouts, turned the captured guns against the shore. The batteries were speedily silenced. James and Melfort, Bellefonds and Tourville, looked on in helpless despondency while the second conflagration proceeded. The conquerors. ROBERT SOUTHEY 213 leaving the ships of war in flames, made their way into an inner basin where many transports lay. Eight of these vessels were set on fire. Several were taken in tow. The rest would have been either destroyed or carried off, had not the sea again begun to ebb. It was impossible to do more ; and the victorious flotilla slowly retired, insulting the hostile camp with a thundering chant of " God save the King." Thus ended, at noon on the twenty-fourth of May, the great conflict which had raged during five days over a wide extent of sea and shore. One English fire-ship had perished in its calling. Sixteen French men of war, all noble vessels, and eight of them three-deckers, had been sunk or burned down to the water-edge. The battle is called, from the place where it terminated, the battle of La Hogue. Thomas rmbinglon Macaulay. Trafalgar (1805) -o -Cy -Cy (From The Life of Nelson) A BOUT half-past nine in the morning of the "^^ 19th, the Mars, being the nearest to the fleet of the shijjs which formed the line of communica- tion with the frigates inshore, repeated the signal that the enemy were coming out of port. The 2 14 THE CALL OF THE SEA wind was at this time very light, with partial breezes, mostly from the S.S.W. Nelson ordered the signal to be made for a chase in the south-east quarter. About two, the repeating ships announced that the enemy were at sea. All night the British fleet continued under all sail, steering to the south- east. At daybreak they were in the entrance of the Straits, but the enemy were not in sight. About seven, one of the frigates made signal that the enemy were bearing north. Upon this the Victory hove to ; and shortly afterwards Nelson made sail again to the northward. In the after- noon the wind blew fresh from the south-west, and the English began to fear that the foe might be forced to return to port. A little before sunset, however, Blackwood, in the Euryalus tele- graphed that they appeared determined to go to the westward. " And that," said the admiral, in his diary, " they shall not do, if it is in the power of Nelson and Bronte to prevent them." Nelson had signified to Blackwood that he depended upon him to keep sight of the enemy. They were observed so well, that all their motions were made known to him ; and, as they wore twice, he inferred that they were aiming to keep the port of Cadiz open, and would retreat there as soon as they saw the British fleet ; for this reason he was very care- ful not to approach near enough to be seen by them during the night. At daybreak the combined ROBERT SOUTHEY 215 fleets were distinctly seen from the Victory's deck, formed in a close line of battle ahead, on the star- board tack, about twelve miles to leeward, and standing to the south. Our fleet consisted of twenty-seven sail of the line and four frigates ; theirs of thirty-three, and seven large frigates. Their superiority was greater in size, and weight of metal, than in numbers. They had four thou- sand troops on board ; and the best riflemen who could be procured, many of them Tyrolese, were dispersed through the ships. Little did the Tyrolese, and little did the Spaniards, at that day imagine what horrors the wicked tyrant whom they served was preparmg for their country! Soon after daylight Nelson came upon deck. The 2 1 St October was a festival in his family, because on that day his uncle, Captain Suckling, in the Dreadnought^ with two other line-of-battlcships, had beaten off a French squadron of four sail of the line and three frigates. Nelson, with that sort of superstition from which few persons are entirely exempt, had more than once expressed his persuasion that this was to be the day of his battle also ; and he was well pleased at seeing his prediction about to be verified. The wind was now from the west, light breezes, with a long heavy swell. Signal was made to bear down upon the enemy in two lines ; and the fleet set all sail. Collingwood, in the Royal Hovcreii^^n^ led the lee 2l6 THE CALL OK THE SP:A line of thirteen ships ; the Viciory led the weather line of fourteen. . . . Blackwood went on board the Victory about six. He found him in good spirits, but very calm ; not in that exhilaration which he had felt upon enter- ing into battle at Aboukir and Copenhagen ; he knew that his own life would be particularly aimed at, and seems to have looked for death with almost as sure an expectation as for victory. His whole attention was fixed upon the enemy. They tacked to the northward, and formed their line on the larboard tack ; thus bringing the shoals of Trafalgar and St. Pedro under the lee of the British, and keeping the port of Cadiz open for themselves. This was judiciously done ; and Nelson, aware of all the advantages which it gave them, made signal to prepare to anchor. Villeneuve was a skilful seaman, worthy of serving a better master and a better cause. His plan of defence was as well conceived, and as original, as the plan of attack. He formed the fleet in a double line, every alternate ship being about a cable's length to windward of her second ahead and astern. Nelson, certain of a triumphant issue to the day, asked Blackwood what he should con- sider as a victory. That officer answered, that, considering the handsome way in which battle was offered by the enemy, their apparent determination ROBERT SOUTH EY 2 1 "J for a fair trial of strength, ami the situation of the land, he thought it would be a glorious result if fourteen were captured. He replied : " I shall not be satisfied with less than twenty." Soon after- wards he asked him if he did not think there was a signal wanting. Captain Blackwood made answer that he thought the whole fleet seemed very clearly to understand what they were about. These words were scarcely spoken before that signal was made which will be remembered as long as the lauguage, or even the memory of England, shall endure — Nelson's last signal — "ENGLAND EXPECT.S EVERY MAN TO DO HIS DUTY!" It was received throughout the fleet with a shout of answering acclamation, made sublime by the spirit which it breathed and the feeling which it expressed. "Now," said Lord Nelson, "I can do no more. We must trust to the Great Disposer of all events, and the justice of our cause. I thank God for this great opportunity of doing my duty." He wore that day, as usual, his admiral's frock coat, bearing on the left breast four stars of the different orders with which he was invested. Orna- ments which rendered him so conspicuous a mark for the enemy, were beheld with ominous appre- hensions by his ofTjcers. It was known that there were riflemen on board the Krcnch ships ; and it could not be doubted but that his life would be particularly aimed at. They communicated their 2l8 THE CALL OF THE SEA fears to each other ; and the surgeon, Mr. Beatty, spoke to the chaplain, Dr. Scott, and to Mr. Scott, the pubhc secretary, desiring that some person would entreat him to change his dress, or cover the stars : but they knew that such a request would highly displease him. " In honour I gained them," he had said when such a thing had been hinted to him formerly, " and in honour I will die with them." Mr. Beatty, however, would not have been deterred by any fear of exciting his dis- pleasure, from speaking to him himself upon a subject in which the weal of England as well as the life of Nelson was concerned, but he was ordered from the deck before he could find an opportunity. This was a point upon which Nelson's officers knew that it was hopeless to remonstrate or reason with him ; but both Blackwood, and his own captain. Hardy, represented to him how advantageous to the fleet it would be for him to keep out of action as long as possible ; and he consented at last to let the Leviathan and the Temeraire^ which were sailing abreast of the Victory^ be ordered to pass ahead. Yet even here the last in- firmity of this noble mind was indulged ; for these ships could not pass ahead if the Victory con- tinued to carry all her sail ; and so far was Nelson from shortening sail, that it was evident he took pleasure in pressing on and rendering it impos- sible for them to obey his own orders. A long ROBERT SOUTHEY 219 swell was setting into the Bay of Cadiz : our ships, crowding all sail, moved majestically before it, with light winds from the south-west. The sun shone on the sails of the enemy ; and their well- formed line, with their numerous three-deckers, made an appearance which any other assailants would have thought formidable ; but the British sailors only admired the beauty and the splendour of the spectacle ; and, in full confulence of win- ning what they saw, remarked to each other, what a fine sight yonder ships would make at Spithead ! The French admiral from the Hucentaure, beheld the new manner in which his enemy was advan- cing. Nelson and Collingwood each leading his line ; and pointing them out to his officers, he is said to have exclaimed, that such conduct could not fail to be successful. Yet Villeneuve had made his own dispositions with the utmost skill, and the fleets under his command waited for the attack with perfect coolness. Ten minutes before twelve they opened their fire. Eight or nine of the ships immediately ahead of the Victory^ and across her bows, fired single guns at her, to ascertain whether she was yet within their range. As soon as Nelson perceived that their shot passed over him, he desired Blackwood, and Captain Browse, of the Sin'ttSy to repair to their respective frigates ; and, on their way, to tell all the captains of the line-of-baltle ships that he depended on their 2 20 THE CALL OF THE SEA exertions ; and that, if by the prescribed mode of attack they found it impracticable to get into action immediately, they might adopt whatever they thought best, provided it led them quickly and closely alongside an enemy. As they were stand- ing on the front of the poop, Blackwood took him by the hand, saying, he hoped soon to return and find him in possession of twenty prizes. He re- plied : " God bless you, Blackwood : I shall never see you again." Nelson's column was steered about two points more to the north than Collingwood's, in order to cut off the enemy's escape into Cadiz : the lee line, therefore, was first engaged. " See," cried Nelson, pointing to the Royal Sovereign, as she steered right for the centre of the enemy's line, cut through it astern of the Suftia Anna, three-decker, and engaged her at the muzzle of her guns on the starboard side : " see how that noble fellow, Collingwood, carries his ship into action ! " Colling- wood, delighted at being first in the heat of the fire, and knowing the feelings of his commander and old friend, turned to his captain and exclaimed, " Rotherham, what would Nelson give to be here ! " Both these brave officers, perhaps, at this moment thought of Nelson with gratitude, for a circum- stance which had occurred on the preceding day. Admiral Collingwood, with some of the captains, having gone on board the Viciory, to receive in- ROBERT SOUTHEY 22 1 structions, Nelson inquired of him where his captain was, and was told, in reply, that they were not upon good terms with each other. " Terms I " said Nelson; — "good terms with each other!" Immediately he sent a boat for Captain Rotherham; led him, as soon as he arrived, to CoUingwood, and saying, " Look ; yonder are the enemy!" bade them shake hands like Englishmen. The enemy continued to fire a gun at a time at the Victory^ till they saw that a shot had passed through her main-top gallant-sail ; then they opened their broadsides, aiming chiefly at her rigging, in the hope of disabling her before she could close with them. Nelson as usual, had hoisted several flags, lest one should be shot away. The enemy showed no colours till late in the action, when they began to feel the necessity of having them to strike. For this reason, the Santissima Triniiiad^ Nelson's old acquaintance, as he used to call her, was distinguishable only by her four decks ; and to the l:)ows of this opponent he ordered the Victory to be steered. Meantime an incessant raking fire was kept up upon the Vicloty. The admiral's secretary was one of the first who fell : he was killed by a cannon shot, while conversing with Hardy. CajJtain Adair, of the marines, with the help of a sailor, endeavoured to remove the body from Nelson's sight, who had a great regard for Mr. Scott; but hoils, and deserted their guns; 228 THE CALL OF THE SEA while our men continued deliberately to load and fire, till they had made the victory secure. Robert Sou/hey. Affair of the Chesapeake and Shannon (1813) (From Bit/ain's Sea- Kings and Sea-Figh(s) TTOWEVER gaUing it had been to the British to see frigate after frigate beaten, there was one man who had " spotted '' the secret of the Americans' success. This was Captain Philip Bowes Vere Broke, of the Shannon. He knew that the British sailors possessed the same fine sea- manly qualities as of yore,but that their captains had allowed drill to go rusty, and paid far too much attention to the polishing of brass and the holy- stoning of decks. Aboard his ship he had his men well in hand : in musketry and broadsword exercise they were as perfect as three hours' daily drill could make them, and the great guns were fired twice a week — a pound of 'bacca every time a man sent a shot through the bull's-eye. It was odd that public opinion looked to Broke as the man to retrieve Britain's glory. With this object in view he had taken the Shannon to the United States, destroying all his captures rather than re- duce his crew by manning and sending in his prizes. To Captain John Lawrence, of the Chesa- JAMES A. MANSON 229 peake. Broke sent several messages inviting him to come out of Boston harbour and try conclusions in the open. Probably these never reached him. At all events, as Broke got no answer he at last indited a polite letter to Lawrence requesting the favour of a ship-to-ship meeting. This challenge — which queerly recalls, though its author was the reverse of a braggart, the missive sent by Sir John Cope from Dunbar to Prince Charlie — was dated on the I stof June, " the Glorious First,"butere it reached its destination. Captain Broke had the satisfaction of seeing from his masthead — whilst his men were dining — the Chesapeake fire a gun, leave her moor- ings, and make way towards him. Lawrence, not to be outdone in chivalry and courtesy, had sent ashore five of his guns, so as to equalise the arma- ment. Each vessel carried twenty-five broadside guns, but the Shannoti only mustered 306 men to the Chesapeake's 376, and the tonnage of the former was 1066 to the latler's 1135. Wc have seen, however, that Broke had an admirably trained and disciplined crew — 'tis said he kept his decks constantly cleared for action — and he was probably more than satisfied to accept battle as he stood. It almost reads like an account of one of those yacht races for the America Cup, to which Sir Thomas Lipton's patriotic ambition has accus- tomed us, to learn that as the Chesupe.ike left 230 THE CALL OF THE SEA the harbour she was accompanied by scores of pinnaces, yachts, pleasure-boats, barges, and a schooner gunboat bearing several American naval officers — all longing to see the fun. Bostonian hearts beat high, and balls and suppers had already been ordered for the return of the conquer- ing heroes. In one particular they set an example which the moderns have not yet copied — there was no difficulty about keeping the course ; every boatload of sightseers was most scrupulously anxious to draw up well out of reach of the guns. At five minutes to i p.m. the Shannon stood out to sea under easy sail, and at one o'clock the Chesapeake rounded Boston lighthouse after her. When Captain Broke had got well into the open he shortened sail to permit his opponent to over- take him. It was late in the afternoon before the Chesapeake drew near. She was then seen to be flying three ensigns : at the main floated the Stars and Stripes, and at the fore she displayed a big white banner with the legend, " Sailor's Rights and Free Trade." The motto implied Jack Tar's right to sail in any bottom he pleased (a dig at the search business), and the country's right to trade without the leave of Great Britain, or France, or any other Power. At 5.10 p.m. Captain Broke ordered his drums to beat to quarters, and the crew stood to their guns. Luckily the wind had fallen light, and JAMES A. MANSON 23I there was little way on the vessel. Everj-thing promised a fair and square fight. Within half an hour the Chesapeake was only two hundred yards away, and Broke seized the opportunity for a few final words to his men, urging them to remember that to their keeping had been committed the duty of asserting the superiority of British seamen over those of any other nation. We can almost hear the emphatic " Ay, ay, sir," of the bronzed tars. At this stage the Shatmon gave three cheers on their own account, which was readily taken up by the bystanding boats, stationed as we have seen, at quite a respectful distance. And now the fateful moment had come. The duellists were but a stone's throw apart. At ten minutes to six William Mindham, captain of the gun, discharged the Shannon's aftermost main- deck gun. It was aimed with exquisite precision, as was the next, fired immediately afterwards, both doing terrible execution. The Cheiapcake then sent in a stinging retort, and by and by both ships were holly engaged, broadside after broadside being discharged as fast as the guns were loaded and trained. From the very first the sujjcrior accuracy of Broke's gunners asbcrtcd itself Almost every shot protluced yells of anguish, and splinters rose up in clouds. The Chesapeake forging ahead too rapidly was hauled up, but with helm untouched (the man at the wheel was probably slain or 232 THE CALF. OF THE SEA wounded) and rigging and masts shot away, she came round so sharply as to stop ahnost entirely dead, and lying thus she got a dreadful punish- ment from her splendidly served foe. By six o'clock she actually drifted back upon the Shamioti. Broke's boarders were quite ready, and, sword in hand, headed by their gallant captain, they leaped upon the quarter-deck of the Chesapeake and cleared the gangways with a furious charge. No man withstood that onset of British sailors armed with pike and bayonet, with cutlass and pistol. The handful of Americans who tried to stem the torrent were borne towards the forecastle, where they soon choked the hatch- way in their panic. Some, terror-stricken, jumped into the sea ; others submitted and were confined in the forecastle. Aboard the Chesapeake chaos had come again. Lawrence, her brave and honour- able captain, lay dying, and most of her officers were killed or hurt. A few men in the shrouds, however, kept up a brisk and galling fire. Broke turned aside to order this to be put down. A warning cry from the sentry over the prisoners in the forecastle made him glance round, and just in the nick of time. Three stalwart Yankees had picked up weapons and were rushing upon him savagely. He parried one man's pike and damaged the fellow's face. The second man laid bare Broke's skull and partially stunned him. The JAMES A. MANSON 233 third cut the captain down and was immediately cut down himself for his pains. Meanwhile a gallant middy, Bill Smith by name, and six sailors had jumped on the Chesapeake's main-yard and silenced the firing in her main-top. Smith then came down to help Mindham, and another man attended to the captain's injuries. Whilst having his head bandaged, Broke saw his old ensign go up over the Yankee's colours, and was satisfied. He was conveyed to the Chesapeake's quarter deck and seated on a gun. A bungle in the changing of the colours, however, cost the life of the Shannon's first lieutenant, Mr. Watt. Hauling down the American flag, he bent the English ensign below instead of above it, and ran it up. The blunder was observed Ijcfore the flags were half way up to the mizzen peak ; but ere it could be rectified the men on the Shannon, seeing the Stripes go up first, concluded the fighting was not yet done, and unwittingly began firing on their own folk on the quarter-deck of the Chesapeake, Mr. Watt being killed and several men wounded. As soon as the British ensign was hoisted properly they recognised their disastrous error and ceased firing. Even now it seemed the Americans had not yet had enough, inx they fired from the hold and slew the sentry. At this the British, justly incensed, poured a volley into the hold, whirh fetched instant shrieks for mercy. Captam Broke 234 THE CALL OF THE SEA sent word that they must surrender at once if they wished for quarter. They gave in promptly, and the combat was over. At this moment Broke fainted from loss of blood and was carried in a jolly-boat to his own ship, which had dropped astern. There never was so short and sharp a fight. The pace was so fast and fierce that the whole thing was ended in twenty minutes. Lawrence having been twice wounded early in the action, was carried below. Asked whether the colours should be struck, he grimly answered, " No ; they shall wave while I live." Then he grew delirious, and during his fever often ex- claimed, " Don't give up the ship " — words which deservedly became classical in the American Navy. Jatnes A. Manson. ENVOI The Sailor's Graveyard <:^ <:> (From ToHi(Uis of Conscience) T X the churchyard, growing gradually dim and ethereal, were laid many bodies from which the white vampires of the main had sucked out the souls. Here mouldered fisher lads, who had whistled over the nets, and dreamed rough dreams of winning island girls and breeding hardy children. Here reposed old limbs of salty mariners, who had for so long defied the ocean that when they knew themselves taken at the last, they turned their rugged faces down to their enemy with a stony and an ironic womier. And here, too, among these cast-up bodies of the drowned, lay many women who had loved the prey of the sea, and kissed the cheeks turned acrid by its winds and waters. Some of them had died from heart-sickness, cursing the sea. .S U 1- B^ ^- .i*C utir iO JAN 2 41^ /r.. REMINGTON RAND INC. 20 213 (533) AA 000 574 331 5 t PLEA<5r DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD ^^t LIBRARYQr S^ ^*- University Research Library M n ^■*,«««*