We spent the afternoon on deck watching the waves, they being fairly
entitled to the designation of billows. The sea was white with foam,
though the day was fine; while round about the ship the eddying water
presented numberless forms of beauty. These words by one of the poets
are sometimes as true of sea water as of fresh:
“How beautiful the water is!
To me ’tis wondrous fair;
No spot can ever lonely be
If water sparkle there.
It hath a thousand tongues of mirth,
Of grandeur or delight,
And every heart is gladder made
When water greets the sight.”
Every now and then an enormous wave would break astern or about
midship, like a mad pursuer compelled suddenly to give up the chase
and die with a roar which seemed to tell what it would have been glad
to do. It was Saturday afternoon, the time devoted by us at home to
driving into the country; but the larger part of the afternoon went
by unheeded while we were watching these frantic waters spending
themselves one after another in their harmless wrath. There is more of
pleasurable excitement in such a contemplation in a ship under sail
than in driving; the sea air in fine weather giving exhilaration to the
system which is in some degree a substitute for exercise. The ceaseless
play of the water, never repeating itself in the same shape, interests
the mind without fatigue, keeps attention awake by new surprises. We
were at the mouth of the River La Plata, or “the River Plate,” as
it is familiarly called, between Uragua and Paraguay, a region for
disagreeable weather. Squalls, thunder and lightning, rain, everything
which can make sea faring people uneasy, abound. But though we are
nearly opposite the mouth of the river we are enjoying a perfect day.
Still we are notified that we are in a region where we must not be
surprised at sudden changes. Since a week after leaving New York we
have been in exhilarating weather. All through November the thermometer
has been at 60 or 70 in the cabin. On deck it has been cool enough, in
the shade of a sail or under an awning. It was only the night before
last that I felt the need of more than a sheet for a covering, though
it was the fifth of December. The mere thought of sitting on a doorstep
or piazza at home at this season to watch the stars, brought forcibly
to mind the contrast of our respective climates. Home is 43 degrees
north of the equator; we are now, Dec. 20th, thirty-seven degrees south
of it; hence we are 43 + 37 = 80 degrees from home; and sixty miles
being a degree we are 80 × 60 = 4800 miles from home, not reckoning the
difference in our longitude.
We went to sleep with everything favoring the expectation of a peaceful
night, but at midnight the tramp of feet on deck revealed that all
hands had been summoned to take in sail. The noise made by the heavy
boots of thirty men was not unlike the noise made by horses on being
removed from a burning stable. The scene on deck that night must
have been a good specimen of “River Plate weather,” judging from the
description given of it by the officers. The captain said in a letter
which he sent home:--
“At eleven o’clock a bank of clouds rose in the northern horizon with
occasional flashes of lightning. As the clouds crept toward the zenith
the flashes grew more frequent until they became incessant, playing
over the whole of the north western sky accompanied by constant growls
of thunder. Thinking a heavy squall was near I took in the royal and
top gallant sails, hauled the courses up snug, had the topsail halyards
and braces all laid down clear and kept the men standing by. When the
clouds reached the zenith sharp flashes of lightning came at short
intervals in addition to the constant display of heat lightning which
had spread over the whole sky, keeping it in a perpetual blaze which
I can compare only to a universal Aurora Borealis. Then it began to
thunder in terrific peals with a continuous growl in the way of a
running sub bass. I ordered all the cabin shutters to be closed tight
that the flashes might not startle the sleepers, for it seemed as
though the most brilliant day were alternating moment after moment
with the blackest night. Then it began to rain. To use a sailor’s
expression, “every drop was a bucketfull.” In the most literal sense,
it poured. Every flash seemed the reopening of the sky, while the
thunder had a combined sound of rattling and roaring, each of these
noises vieing with the other, making me feel as though parks of
artillery were crashing the reservoirs, bringing down their contents
by floods. Withal, there was the phenomenon which landsmen are slow to
believe, balls of fire resting on the trucks and yard arms, and called
by sailors, “corpasants,” (a corruption of “corpus sancti”) these
electric fires appearing to envelope the ship, availing themselves
of all its points. All this was a combination of sights and sounds
characteristic of the River Plate region. I thought every moment that
a hurricane squall would burst upon us. It did blow hard. The wind
changed entirely round the compass by spells, catching us aback two
or three times, compelling us to brace the yards round, but the gale
did not amount to anything serious. In a couple of hours the storm
subsided. While it lasted it was appalling. All the powers of the air
seemed to be in requisition to work some disaster.”
Some days later upon going on deck in the morning, the scene was a
picture of desolation. A heavy gale was blowing and several sails had
been stripped off by the winds. The mast and spars made me think of the
nut trees in the country after a gale when the leaves are gone; the
spars were hardly clothed with canvas enough to keep the ship on her
way, the few sails which remained being furled, to save them; only some
of the canvas about the bowsprit and foremast being spread, with the
mizzen staysail, to prevent the ship from broaching to. Eighteen men
were aloft securing the sails, the ship going only two or three knots.
Some of the torn sails had been sent down on deck. I never desired more
the skill of a draftsman that I might picture the appearance of some of
the sails as they came down after the gale had spent its ingenuity in
riddling them. The shapes of the rents could not have been contrived
by human skill; the canvas was not merely torn, it was picked in
pieces, mocking any attempt to bring it together and even to divine how
its parts were ever related to each other. The way in which the sail
cloth was dishevelled by the gale, laid out in shreds, every thread
loosened from its neighbor, some parts of the sail mangled, other parts
minced as no art of human fingers or mechanical skill could rival, made
the sailors despair of any attempt to do mending in the premises. They
wound large parts of a topsail together for scouring-rags, some of it
for cleaning brass work and other uses, for which the riddling wind had
made the duck surprisingly soft like flannel, and some of it like lint.
It seems fearful to lie so far removed from the habitable parts of the
globe, a little company of human beings without neighbors, and with no
means of help should we need it. Yet there are birds flying around
us; some of them are resting on these waves. This inspires us with a
feeling of safety. The sight of life in these creatures seems to be a
connecting link between us and the living God. “From the ends of the
earth,” literally, we cry to God when our hearts are overwhelmed by
a sense of solitude. I am writing in a large easy chair, in which it
requires some effort to preserve an upright position. The chair is made
fast with rope yarns tying it to staples driven in to the floor; but
for these I should go over. My inkstand is lashed with seizings to the
swinging rest in front of me, diverting my attention from writing to
the ink in the glass which at every roll of the ship climbs so nearly
to an angle of forty-five degrees as to excite apprehension that it
will spill. Ink is at best a source of mischief to all of us under the
wisest precautions. What should I do just now should mine run over the
floor? The stream would look as capricious as the wanderings of the
children of Israel in the wilderness look on the map. I could not run
for help, nor even stand, to call; I will put the cork in after dipping
the pen when we are midway between a lee and weather roll. The girls
are sewing as composedly as at home, one of them reading aloud from
Dickens’ Mutual Friend. When I raise my eyes from my papers and look
out of the window and see the water racing by us, white with foam, I
need only the jingling of bells to make me fancy that I am in a sleigh.
The man at the wheel keeps his post in his oil-cloth coat; I hear the
pelting rain when the door is opened by the captain going up to ask
“how she heads;” the gale is strengthening; we are nearing Cape Horn.