been a baby, and strode off across the valley towards the massive
heap of rocks, followed by his comrade and myself. We turned sharply
round a sort of gate, composed of three or four huge coral blocks
balanced upon each other, and entered a grotto or cave with a
descending floor. Over the pieces of rock with which the ground was
strewed we stumbled onward in the dim light until we entered water
and splashed on through it for some distance. Then, our eyes being
by this time used to the darkness, the general features of the place
could be made out. Communication with the sea was evident, for the
signs of high-water mark could be seen on the walls of the cave just
above our heads. For a minute or so we remained perfectly still in
the midst of that dead silence, so deep that I fancied I could hear
the shell-fish crawling on the bottom. Then I was brought a few paces
nearer the Captain, as he hung upon the great Kanaka’s shoulder.
Taking my eyes from his death-like face I cast them down, and there,
almost at my feet, was one of those enormous clams such as you see
the shells of thrown up on all these beaches, big as a child’s
bath. Hardly had the horrible truth dawned on me of what was going
to happen than it took place. Lifting the skipper into an upright
position, the giant dropped him feet first between the gaping shells
of the big clam, which, the moment it felt the touch, shut them with
a smash that must have broken the skipper’s legs. An awful wail burst
from him, the first sound he had yet made. I have said he was brave,
and he was, too, although such a cruel villain, but now he broke down
and begged hard for life. It may have been that the Kanakas were deaf
as well as dumb; at any rate, for all sign of hearing they showed,
they were. He appealed to me, but I was as helpless as he, and my
turn was apparently now to come. But evidently the Kanakas were only
carrying out what they considered to be payment of a due debt, for
after looking at him fixedly for awhile, during which I felt the
water rising round my knees, they turned their backs on him and led
me away. I was glad to go, for his shrieks and prayers were awful to
hear, and I couldn’t do anything.
“They led me to where they had first caught us, made me fast to a
tree, and left me. Overcome with fatigue and hunger I must have
fainted, for when I come to I found myself loose, lying on the sand,
and two or three of my shipmates attending to me. As soon as I was
able to speak they asked me what had become of the skipper. Then it
all rushed back on me at once, and I told them the dreadful story.
They heard me in utter silence, the mate saying at last, ‘Wall,
sonny, it’s a good job fer yew the Kanakers made ye fast, or yew’d
have had a job ter clear yersef of murder.’ And so I thought now.
However, as soon as I was a bit rested and had something to eat, I
led them to the cave, keeping a bright look-out meanwhile for a
possible attack by the Kanakas. None appeared though, and the tide
having fallen again we had no difficulty in finding the skipper. All
that was left of him, that is, for the sea-scavengers had been busy
with him, so that he was a sight to remember with a crawling at your
stomach till your dying day. He was still fast in the grip of the
clam, so it was decided to leave him there and get on board again at
once.
“We did so unmolested, getting sail on the ship as soon as we reached
her, so as to lose sight of that infernal spot. But it’s no use
denying the fact that we all felt glad the skipper was dead; some
rejoiced at the manner of his death, although none could understand
who called him ashore or why he obeyed. Those who had whispered the
theory of the finish of his contract with Jemmy Squarefoot chuckled
at their prescience, as fully justified by the sequel, declaring that
the big Kanaka whom I had seen was none other than Satan himself come
for his bargain.
“Matters went on now in quite a different fashion. The relief was so
great that we hardly knew ourselves for the same men, and it affected
all hands alike, fore and aft. The secret of the breaking line was
discovered when Mr. Peck, the mate, took the skipper’s berth over.
In a locker beneath the bunk he found the pieces of a big bottle,
what they call a ‘carboy,’ I think, and in hunting up the why of
this a leakage through the deck was found into the store-room where
the cordage was kept. Only two other coils were affected by the
stuff that had run down, and of course they were useless, but the
rest of the stock was all right. Now, I don’t know what it was, nor
how it came there, nor any more about it, and if you ain’t tired of
listening I’m mighty tired of talking. Pass that ‘switchel’[1] this
way.”
[1] A drink of molasses, vinegar, and water.
MARATHON OF THE SEALS
Far beyond the roaring track of the homeward-bound merchantman,
lie in the South Pacific the grim clusters of salt-whitened isles
marked on the chart as the South Shetlands. Many years have come
and gone since their hungry shores were busy with the labours of
the sealers, that, disdainful of the terrors of snow-laden gale and
spindrift-burdened air, toiled amid the Antarctic weather to fill
their holds with the garments of the sea-folk. Then, after perils
incredible, the adventurers would return to port, and waste in a week
of debauch the fruit of their toil, utterly forgetful of crashing
floe or hissing sea, frozen limbs or wrenching hunger pains. When all
was spent they would return, resolutely forgetting their folly and
wreaking upon the innocent seal all the rage of regret that _would_
rise within them. They spared none--bull, cow, and calf alike were
slain, as if in pure lust of slaughter, until the helplessness of
utter fatigue compelled them to desist and snatch an interval of
death-like sleep, oblivious of all the grinding bitterness of their
surroundings. Life was held cheap among them, a consequence, not to
be wondered at, of its hardness and the want of all those things that
make life desirable. And yet the stern existence had its own strong
fascination for those who had become inured to it. Few of them
ever gave it up voluntarily, ending their stormy life-struggle in
some sudden ghastly fashion and being almost immediately forgotten.
Occasionally some sorely-maimed man would survive the horrors of
his disablement, lying in the fetid forecastle in sullen endurance
until the vessel reached a port whence he could be transferred to
civilisation. But these unhappy men fretted grievously for the
vast openness of the Antarctic, the gnashing of the ice-fangs upon
the black rocks, the unsatisfied roar of the western gale, and the
ceaseless combat with the relentless sea.
Many years came and went while the Southern sealer plied his trade,
until at last none of the reckless skippers could longer disguise
from themselves the fact that their harvest fields were rapidly
becoming completely barren. Few and far between were the islets
frequented by the seals, the majority of the old grounds being
quite abandoned. One by one the dejected fishermen gave up the
attempt, until in due time those gaunt fastnesses resumed their
primitive loneliness. The long, long tempest roared questioningly
over the deserted islands, as if calling for its vanished children,
and refusing to be comforted because they were not. Years passed
in solitude, but for the busy sea-fowl, who, because they had no
commercial value, were left unmolested to eat their fill of the
sea’s rich harvest, and rear among the bleak rock-crannies their
fluffy broods. At last, out of the midst of a blinding smother of
snow, there appeared one day off the most southerly outlier of the
South Shetlands a little group of round velvety heads staring with
wide, humid eyes at the surf-lashed fortresses of the shore. Long
and warily they reconnoitred, for although many generations had
passed since their kind had been driven from those seas, the memory
of those pitiless days had been so steadily transmitted through the
race that it had become a part of themselves, an instinct infallible
as any other they possessed. No enemy appearing, they gradually drew
nearer and nearer, until their leader, a fine bull seal of four
seasons, took his courage in both flippers and mounted the most
promising slope, emerging from the foaming breakers majestically, and
immediately becoming a hirpling heap of clumsiness that apparently
bore no likeness to the graceful, agile creature of a few moments
before. Obediently his flock followed him until they reached a
little patch of hard smooth sand sheltered by a semi-circle of great
wave-worn boulders, and admirably suited to their purpose. Here, with
sleepless vigilance of sentinels, they rested, rather brokenly at
first, as every incursion of the indignant sea-fowl startled them,
but presently subsiding into ungainly attitudes of slumber.
Whence they had come was as great a mystery as all the deep-water
ways of the sea-people must ever be to man, or how many
halting-places they must have visited and rejected at the bidding
of their unerring instinct warning them that the arch-destroyers’
visits were to be feared. However, they soon made themselves at home,
fattening marvellously upon the innumerable multitudes of fish that
swarmed around the bases of those barren islands, and between whiles
basking in the transient sun-gleams that occasionally touched the
desolate land with streaks of palest gold. And as time went on, being
unmolested in their domestic arrangements, the coming generation
tumbled about the rugged shore in those pretty gambols that all young
things love, learning steadily withal to take their appointed places
in the adult ranks as soon as they had proved their capability so
to do. Thus uneventfully and happily passed the seasons until the
little party of colonists had grown to be a goodly herd, with leaders
of mighty prowess, qualified to hold their own against any of their
kind, and inured to combat by their constantly recurring battles with
each other, their love affairs, in which they fought with a fury
astonishing to witness.
But one bright spring morning, when after a full meal the females
were all dozing peacefully among the boulders, and the pups were
gleefully waddling and tumbling among them, there came a message from
the sea to the fighting males, who instantly suspended their family
battles to attend to the urgent call. How the news came they alone
knew, its exact significance was hidden even from them, but a sense
of imminent danger was upon them all. The females called up their
young and retreated farther inland among the labyrinth of rocky peaks
that made the place almost impossible for human travel. The males,
about forty of them, ranged uneasily along the shore, their wide
nostrils dilated and their whiskers bristling with apprehension.
Ever and anon they would pause in their watchful patrol and couch
silently as if carved in marble, staring seaward with unwinking eyes
at the turbulent expanse of broken sea. Presently, within a cable’s
length of the shore, up rose an awful head--the enemy had arrived.
Another and another appeared until a whole herd of several scores
of sea-elephants were massed along the land edge and beginning to
climb ponderously over the jagged pinnacles shoreward. Not only did
they outnumber the seals by about four to one, but each of them was
equal in bulk to half-a-dozen of the largest of the defenders. Huge
as the great land mammal from whom they take their trivial name,
ferocious in their aspect, as they inflated their short trunks and
bared their big gleaming teeth, they hardly deigned to notice the
gallant band of warriors who faced them. Straight upward they came as
if the outlying rocks had suddenly been endowed with life and were
shapelessly invading the dry land. But never an inch did the little
company of defenders give back. With every head turned to the foe
and every sinew tense with expectation they waited, waited until at
last the two forces met. Such was the shock of their impact that one
would have thought the solid earth trembled beneath them, and for
a while in that writhing, groaning, roaring mass nothing could be
clearly distinguished. Presently, however, it could be seen that the
lighter, warier seals were fighting upon a definite plan, and that
they carefully avoided the danger of being overwhelmed under the
unwieldy masses of their enemies. While the huge elephants hampered
each other sorely, and often set their terrible jaws into a comrade’s
neck, shearing through blubber and sinew and bone, the nimbler seals
hung on the outskirts of the heavy leviathans and wasted no bite.
But the odds were tremendous. One after another of the desperately
fighting seals fell crushed beneath a mammoth many times his size;
again and again a fiercely struggling defender, jammed between two
gigantic assailants, found his head between the jaws of one of them,
who would instantly crush it into pulp. Still they fought on wearily
but unflinchingly until only six remained alive. Then, as suddenly as
if by some instant agreement, hostilities ceased. The remnant of the
invaders crawled heavily seaward, leaving the rugged battle-ground
piled mountainously with their dead. The survivors sank exhausted
where they had fought such a memorable fight, and slept securely,
knowing well that their home was safe, the enemy would return no
more. And the rejoicing, ravenous birds came in their countless hosts
to feast upon the slain.
OCEAN CURRENTS
So mysterious are all the physical phenomena of the sea that it is,
perhaps, hardly possible to say of any particular one that it is
more wonderful than the rest. And yet one is sorely tempted thus
to distinguish when meditating upon the movements of the almost
inconceivable mass of water which goes to make up that major portion
of the external superficies of our planet which we call “the sea.”
In spite of all the labours of investigators, notwithstanding all
the care and patience which science has bestowed upon oceanography,
it is nevertheless true that, except in a few broad instances, the
direction, the rate, and the dependability of ocean currents still
remain a profound mystery. Nor should this excite any wonder. If we
remember how great is the influence over the sea possessed by the
winds, how slight an alteration in the specific gravity of water is
sufficient to disturb its equilibrium and cause masses hundreds of
square miles in area to exchange levels with the surrounding ocean,
we shall at once admit that, except in those few instances hinted
at which may be referred to constant causes, ocean currents must
of necessity be still among the phenomena whose operations cannot
be reckoned upon with any certainty, but must be watched for and
guarded against with the most jealous care by those who do business
in great waters.
Perhaps one of the commonest of the many errors made in speaking of
marine things is that of confounding current with tide. Now tide,
though a variable feature of the circulation of the waters near land,
is fairly dependable. That is to say, the navigator may calculate by
means of the moon’s age and the latitude of the place not only the
time of high water, but knowing the mean height at full and change
of the moon, he may and does ascertain to what height the water will
rise, or how low it will fall at a certain place on a given date.
True, a heavy gale of wind blowing steadily in or against the same
direction of the ebbing or flowing tide will accelerate or retard,
raise or depress, that tide at the time; but these aberrations,
though most unpleasant oftentimes to riparian householders, are
rarely of much hindrance or danger to navigation. This cannot be said
of the currents of the sea. The tides have their limits assigned
to them both inland and off-shore, although in the latter case it
is almost impossible to tell exactly where their influence becomes
merged in the vaster sway of the ocean currents, with all their
unforeseen developments. The limits of tidal waters in rivers, on the
other hand, being well under observation at all times, may be and are
determined with the greatest exactitude.
With regard to the few instances of dependability among ocean
currents, the first place will undoubtedly by common consent be given
to the Gulf Stream. Owing its existence primarily to the revolution
of the earth upon its axis, its outflow through the tortuous channel
connecting the Gulf of Florida with the North Atlantic is more
constant and steady in direction than any ebbing or flowing tide
in the world, inasmuch as its “set” is invariably upon one course.
Its rate is not so uniform, varying somewhat with the season, but
in the narrowest part of the channel remaining fairly constant at
about four knots an hour. Yet sail but a few score leagues into the
Florida Gulf whence this great river in the sea takes its apparent
rise, and its influence disappears! The mariner may seek there in
vain for that swift, silent flow which in the Straits of Florida
sweeps him north-eastward irresistibly in the teeth of the strongest
gale. What has happened? Does the mighty stream drain westward
into that great land-locked sea by hundreds of channels from the
Equatorial regions, but far below the surface, and, obeying some
all-compelling impulse, rise to the light upon reaching the Bahama
Banks, pouring out its beneficent flood as it comes at the rate of
a hundred miles per day? It sweeps into the broad Atlantic, and
immediately spreads out into a breadth to which the Amazon is but a
brooklet, losing its velocity meanwhile, until, having skirted the
North American coast as far as the Grand Banks, it rolls in sublime
grandeur eastward towards these “fortunate isles.” As it does so
the mystery attendant upon it deepens. Its balmy presence cannot be
mistaken, for the air on either side of it may be piercing in its
keenness, while immediately above it there is summer. A gale blowing
at right angles to its course will raise that terrible combination
of waves which gives alike to the “Western Ocean” and the “pitch of
the Cape” their evil reputation as the most dangerous in the world;
and yet who among navigators has ever been able to determine what,
if any, rate of speed it has in mid-Atlantic? Look through hundreds
of log-books kept on board ships that are, perhaps, more carefully
navigated than any others, the North Atlantic liners, and you shall
not find a trace of the Gulf Stream “set” mentioned. In order to make
this clear, it should be said that in all properly navigated ships
the course steered and the speed made are carefully noted throughout
the twenty-four hours; and this course, with distance run, calculated
from the position accurately fixed by observation of the celestial
bodies at the previous noon, gives the ship’s position by “dead
reckoning.” The ship’s position being also found by the celestial
bodies at the same time, the difference between the latter and the
“dead reckoning” position should give the “set” and direction of
the current for the twenty-four hours. And in vessels so carefully
steered, and whose speed is so accurately known, as the great liners
are, such current data are as trustworthy as any nautical data can
be. But according to the records kept by these able navigators, there
is no current setting eastward across the North Atlantic. Perhaps the
explanation is that it is so very sluggish as to be unnoticeable, for
those dreadful monuments of misfortune to themselves and others, the
derelict ships, have been known to drift completely backwards and
forwards across the Atlantic, finding not only a current to carry
them eastward, but its counter-current to carry them back again.
But who among us with the slightest smattering of physiography is
there that is not assured that but for the genial warmth of this
mighty silent sea-river our islands would revert to their condition
at the glacial epoch; who is there but feels a shiver of dread pass
over his scalp when he contemplates the possibility of any diversion
of its life-giving waters from our shores? The bare suggestion of
such a calamity is most terrifying.
As steady and reliable in its operations is the great Equatorial
current which, sweeping along the Line from east to westward, is
doubtless the fountain and origin of the Gulf Stream, although its
operations among that ring of islands guarding the entrance to the
Mexican Gulf are involved in such obscurity that none may trace
them out. And going farther south, we find the Agulhas current,
beloved of homeward-bound sailing-ships round the Cape of Good Hope,
pursuing its even, resistless course around the Southern Horn of
Africa changelessly throughout the years. How its stubborn flow
frets the stormy Southern Sea! No wonder that the early navigators
doubling the Cape outward-bound, and fearing to go south, believed
that some unthinkable demon held sway over those wild waves. The
passage of Cape Horn from east to west holds the bad eminence to-day
among seafarers of being the most difficult in the world, but what
the outward passage around the Cape of Storms must have been before
men learned that it was possible to avoid the stream of the Agulhas
current by going a few degrees south we of these later days can only
imagine. What becomes of the Agulhas current when once it has poured
its volume of Indian Ocean waters into the Atlantic? Does it sink
below the surface some hundreds of fathoms, and silently, smoothly,
glide south to the confines of the Antarctic ice barrier, or does it
wander northward into warmer regions? In any case, it fulfils the
one grand function of all currents, whether of air or water--the
avoidance of stagnation, the circulation of health among the nations
of the earth.
Coming northward in the Pacific, let us note the counterpart of
the Gulf Stream, the Kuro Siwo, or Black River of Japan, with the
multitudinous isles of the East Indian Archipelago for its Caribbean
Sea, and Nippon for its British Isles. It is, however, but a poor
competitor in benevolence with our own Gulf Stream, as all those who
know their Japan in winter can testify. Others there are that might
be noted and classified if this aimed at being a scientific article,
but these will suffice. These are surely wide fields enough for the
imagination to rove in, wonderful depths of energy in plenty wherein
the reverent and thoughtful mind may find all-sufficient food for
its workings. Remembering that the known is but the fringe of the
unknown, and that the secrets of the ocean are so well kept that
man’s hand shall never fully tear aside the veil, we may patiently
ponder and wonder. That great sea of the ancients beyond whose
portals, according to their wisdom, lay Cimmerian darkness--what
keeps its almost tideless waters sweet? Unseen currents enter and
leave by the Pillars of Hercules at differing levels, and could we
but penetrate those dim regions we should doubtless find the ingress
and egress of that incalculable mass of water proceeding continually,
the one above the other, renewing from the exhaustless stores of the
Atlantic the staleness of the great midland lake, itself apparently
remaining in unchanging level.
But when all these great well-known movements of the ocean have
been considered, there still remain an infinite number of minor
divagations influenced by who knows what hidden causes. The
submarine upheavals of central heat, when from out of her glowing
entrails the old earth casts incandescent stores of lava, raising
the superincumbent mass of water for many square miles almost to
boiling-point--who can estimate the effect that these throes have
upon the trend of great areas of ocean? The almost infernal energy
of those gyrating meteors of the tropics as they rage across the
seas--how can any mind, however acute, assess the drag upon the whole
body of surface water that is manifested thereby? To say nothing of
the displacement caused by the less violent but far more frequent
stress laid upon the much-enduring sea by extra-tropical gales,
whereby the baffled mariner’s calculations are all overset, and his
ship that should be careering safely in the wide offing is suddenly
dashed in ruins upon the iron-bound shore!