The Captain Was All Ready
For It, And A Ship, If She Is A Good Sea-Boat, May Laugh At Any Winds Or
Any Waves Provided She Be Prepared.
The danger is when a ship has got
all sail set and one of these bursts of wind is shot out at her; then
her masts go overboard in no time.
Sailors generally estimate a gale of
wind by the amount of damage it does, if they don't lose a mast or get
their bulwarks washed away, or at any rate carry away a few sails, they
don't call it a gale, but a stiff breeze; if, however, they are caught
even by comparatively a very inferior squall, and lose something, they
call it a gale.
The captain assured us that the sea never assumes a much grander or more
imposing aspect than that which it wore on this occasion. He called me
to look at it between two and three in the morning when it was at its
worst; it was certainly very grand, and made a tremendous noise, and the
wind would scarcely let one stand, and made such a roaring in the
rigging as I never heard, but there was not that terrific appearance
that I had expected. It didn't suggest any ideas to one's mind about
the possibility of anything happening to one. It was excessively
unpleasant to be rolled hither and thither, and I never felt the force
of gravity such a nuisance before; one's soup at dinner would face one
at an angle of 45 degrees with the horizon, it would look as though
immovable on a steep inclined plane, and it required the nicest handling
to keep the plane truly horizontal. So with one's tea, which would
alternately rush forward to be drunk and fly as though one were a
Tantalus; so with all one's goods, which would be seized with the most
erratic propensities. Still we were unable to imagine ourselves in any
danger, save that one flaxen-headed youth of two-and-twenty kept waking
up his companion for the purpose of saying to him at intervals during
the night, "I say, isn't it awful?" till finally silenced him with a
boot. While on the subject of storms I may add, that a captain, if at
all a scientific man, can tell whether he is in a cyclone (as we were)
or not, and if he is in a cyclone he can tell in what part of it he is,
and how he must steer so as to get out of it. A cyclone is a storm that
moves in a circle round a calm of greater or less diameter; the calm
moves forward in the centre of the rotatory storm at the rate of from
one or two to thirty miles an hour. A large cyclone 500 miles in
diameter, rushing furiously round its centre, will still advance in a
right line, only very slowly indeed. A small one 50 or 60 miles across
will progress more rapidly. One vessel sailed for five days at the rate
of 12, 13, and 14 knots an hour round one of these cyclones before the
wind all the time, yet in the five days she had made only 187 miles in a
straight line. I tell this tale as it was told to me, but have not
studied the subjects myself. Whatever saloon passengers may think about
a gale of wind, I am sure that the poor sailors who have to go aloft in
it and reef topsails cannot welcome it with any pleasure.
CHAPTER II
Life on Board - Calm - Boat Lowered - Snares and Traps - Land - Driven off
coast - Enter Port Lyttelton - Requisites for a Sea Voyage - Spirit of
Adventure aroused.
Before continuing the narrative of my voyage, I must turn to other
topics and give you some account of my life on board. My time has
passed very pleasantly: I have read a good deal; I have nearly finished
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, am studying Liebig's
Agricultural Chemistry, and learning the concertina on the instrument of
one of my fellow-passengers. Besides this, I have had the getting up
and management of our choir. We practise three or four times a week; we
chant the Venite, Glorias, and Te Deums, and sing one hymn. I have two
basses, two tenors, one alto, and lots of girls, and the singing
certainly is better than you would hear in nine country places out of
ten. I have been glad by this means to form the acquaintance of many of
the poorer passengers. My health has been very good all the voyage: I
have not had a day's sea-sickness. The provisions are not very first-
rate, and the day after to-morrow, being Christmas Day, we shall sigh
for the roast beef of Old England, as our dinner will be somewhat of the
meagrest. Never mind! On the whole I cannot see reason to find any
great fault. We have a good ship, a good captain, and victuals
sufficient in quantity. Everyone but myself abuses the owners like pick
pockets, but I rather fancy that some of them will find themselves worse
off in New Zealand. When I come back, if I live to do so (and I
sometimes amass a wonderful fortune in a very short time, and come back
fabulously rich, and do all sorts of things), I think I shall try the
overland route. Almost every evening four of us have a very pleasant
rubber, which never gets stale. So you will have gathered that, though
very anxious to get to our journey's end, which, with luck, we hope to
do in about three weeks' time, still the voyage has not proved at all
the unbearable thing that some of us imagined it would have been. One
great amusement I have forgotten to mention - that is, shuffle-board, a
game which consists in sending some round wooden platters along the deck
into squares chalked and numbered from one to ten.
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