Two Or Three Long High Hills Of
Water Seemed To Fill Up The Whole Horizon, Themselves An Aggregate Of A
Countless Number Of Leaping, Foam-Capped Waves, Each Apparently Large
Enough To Overwhelm A Ship.
Huge green waves seemed to chase us, when,
just as they reached the stern, the ship would lift, and they would pass
under her.
She showed especial capabilities for rolling. She would roll
down on one side, the billows seeming ready to burst in foam over her,
while the opposite bulwark was fifteen or eighteen feet above the water,
displaying her bright green copper. The nights were more glorious than the
days, when the broad full moon would shed her light upon the water with a
brilliancy unknown in our foggy clime. It did not look like a wan flat
surface, placed flat upon a watery sky, but like a large radiant sphere
hanging in space. The view from the wheel-house was magnificent. The
towering waves which came up behind us heaped together by mighty winds,
looked like hills of green glass, and the phosphorescent light like fiery
lamps within - the moonlight glittered upon our broad foamy wake - our masts
and spars and rigging stood out in sharp relief against the sky, while for
once our canvas looked white. Far in the distance the sharp bow would
plunge down into the foam, and then our good ship, rising, would shake her
shiny sides, as if in joy at her own buoyancy. The busy hum of men marred
not the solitary sacredness of midnight on the Atlantic. The moon "walked
in brightness," auroras flashed, and meteors flamed, and a sensible
presence of Deity seemed to pervade the transparent atmosphere in which we
were viewing "the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep."
I could scarcely understand how this conjunction of circumstances could
produce any but agreeable sensations; but it is a melancholy fact that the
saloon emptied and the state-rooms filled, and the number of promenaders
daily diminished. People began to find the sea "an unpleasant fact." I
heard no more Byronic quotations about its "glad waters," or comments on
the "splendid run" - these were changed into anxious questions as to when
we should reach Liverpool? and, if we were in danger? People querulously
complained of the ale, hitherto their delight; abused the meat; thought
the mulligatawny "horrid stuff;" and wondered how they could ever have
thought plum-puddings fit for anything but pigs. Mysterious disappearances
were very common; diligent peripatetics were seen extended on sofas, or
feebly promenading under shelter of the bulwarks; while persons who prided
themselves on their dignity sustained ignominious falls, or clung to
railings in a state of tottering decrepitude, in an attempted progress
down the saloon. Though we had four ledges on the tables, cruets, bottles
of claret, and pickles became locomotive, and jumped upon people's laps;
almost everything higher than a plate was upset - pickles, wine, ale, and
oil forming a most odoriferous mixture; but these occurrences became too
common to be considered amusing.
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