The little fragile craft which Stephen Gaff sent adrift upon the world
of waters freighted with its precious document, began its long voyage
with no uncertainty as to its course, although to the eye of man it
might have appeared to be the sport of uncertain waves and breezes.
When the bottle fell upon the broad bosom of the South Pacific, it sank
as if its career were to end at the beginning; but immediately it
re-appeared with a leap, as if the imprisoned spirit of the atmosphere
were anxious to get out. Then it settled down in its watery bed until
nothing but the neck and an inch of the shoulder was visible above the
surface. Thus it remained; thus it floated in the deep, in storm and
calm, in heat and cold; thus it voyaged more safely, though not more
swiftly, than all the proud ships that spread their lofty canvas to the
breeze, night and day, for weeks and months, ay, and years together--not
irregularly, not at haphazard, but steadily, perseveringly, in strict
obedience to the undeviating laws which regulate the currents in the
ocean and the air as truly and unchangeably as they do the circulation
of the blood in the human frame.
The bottle started from that part of the South Pacific which is known to
mariners as the Desolate Region--so called from the circumstance of that
part of the sea being almost entirely destitute of animal life. Here it
floated slowly, calmly, but surely, to the eastward with the great
oceanic current, which, flowing from the regions of the antarctic sea,
in that part sweeps round the southern continent of America, and makes
for the equator by way of the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Now, reader, allow me to screw up a little philosophy here, and try to
show you the why and the wherefore of the particular direction of our
bottle's voyage.
Man has been defined by some lexicographer as a "cooking animal." I
think it would be more appropriate to call him a _learning animal_, for
man does not always cook, but he never ceases to learn--also to unlearn.
One of the great errors which we have been called on, of recent years,
to unlearn, is the supposed irregularity and uncertainty of the winds
and waves. Nothing is more regular, nothing more certain--not even the
rising and setting of the sun himself--than the circulation of the
waters and the winds of earth. The apparent irregularity and
uncertainty lies in our limited power and range of perception. The laws
by which God regulates the winds and waves are as fixed as is the law of
gravitation, and every atom of air, every drop of water, moves in its
appointed course in strict obedience to those laws, just as surely as
the apple, when severed from the bough, obeys the law of gravitation,
and falls to the ground.
One grand and important fact has been ascertained, namely, that all the
waters of the sea flow from the equator to the poles and back again.
Disturbed equilibrium is the great cause of oceanic currents. Heat and
cold are the chief agents in creating this disturbance.
It is obvious that when a portion of water in any vessel sinks, another
portion must of necessity flow into the space which it has left, and if
the cause which induced the sinking continue, so the flow to fill up
will continue, and thus a current will be established.
Heat at the equator warms the sea-water, and makes it light; cold at the
poles chills it, and makes it heavy. Hot water, being light, rises;
cold water, being heavy, sinks.
Here, then, is a sufficient cause to produce the effect of currents in
the sea.
But there are other causes at work. Excessive evaporation at the
equator carries off the water of the sea, but leaves the salt behind,
thus rendering it denser and heavier; while excessive influx of fresh
water at the poles, (from rain and snow and melting ice), renders the
sea light;--in addition to which corallines and shell-fish everywhere
abstract the lime that is in the sea, by secreting it on their bodies in
the form of shells, and thus increase the lightness of those particles
of water from which the lime has been abstracted. The other particles
of water being generous in their nature, hasten to impart of their lime
and salt to those that have little or none.
Here, then, we have perpetual motion rendered absolutely certain, both
as to continuance and direction.
But the latter causes which I have named are modifying causes which tend
to counteract, or rather to deflect and direct currents in their flow.
Besides which, the rotation of the earth, the action of the winds, and
the conformation of continents and islands, have a powerful influence on
currents, so that some flow at the bottom of ocean, some on the surface,
some from east to west or west to east, or aslant in various directions,
while, where currents meet there is deflection, modification, or
stagnation, but there is no confusion; all goes on with a regularity and
harmony which inconceivably excels that of the most complex and
beautiful mechanism of man's constructing, although man cannot perceive
this order and harmony by reason of his limited powers.
Now, these are facts, not theories founded on speculation. They have
been arrived at by the slow but sure method of induction. Hundreds of
thousands of practical men have for many years been observing and
recording phenomena of every kind in connexion with the sea. These
observations have been gathered together, collated, examined, and deeply
studied by philosophers, who have drawn their conclusions therefrom.
Ignorance of these facts rendered the navigation of the sea in days of
old a matter of uncertainty and great danger. The knowledge of them and
of other cognate facts enables man in these days to map out the
so-called trackless ocean into districts, and follow its well-known
highways with precision and comparative safety.
Our bottle moved along with the slow but majestic flow of one of those
mighty currents which are begotten among the hot isles of the Pacific,
where the corallines love to build their tiny dwellings and rear their
reefs and groves.
In process of time it left the warm regions of the sun, and entered
those stormy seas which hold perpetual war around Cape Horn. It passed
the straits where Magellan spread his adventurous sails in days of old,
and doubled the cape which Byron, Bougainville, and Cook had doubled
long before it.
Ah! well would it be for man if the bottle had never doubled anything
but that cape! And alas for man when his sight is doubled, and his
crimes and woes are doubled, and his life is halved instead of doubled,
by--"the bottle!"
Off Cape Horn our adventurous little craft met with the rough usage from
winds and waves that marked the passage of its predecessors. Stormy
petrels hovered over it and pecked its neck and cork. Albatrosses
stooped inquiringly and flapped their gigantic wings above it. South
Sea seals came up from Ocean's caves, and rubbed their furred sides
against it. Sea-lions poked it with their grizzly snouts; and penguins
sat bolt upright in rows on the sterile islands near the cape, and gazed
at it in wonder.
Onward it moved with the north-western drift, and sighted on its left,
(on its port bow, to speak nautically), the land of Patagonia, where the
early discoverers reported the men to be from six to ten feet high, and
the ladies six feet; the latter being addicted to staining their eyelids
black, and the former to painting a red circle round their left eyes.
These early discoverers failed, however, to tell us why the right eyes
of the men were neglected; so we are forced to the conclusion that they
were left thus untouched in order that they might wink facetiously with
the more freedom. Modern travellers, it would seem, contradict, (as
they usually do), many of the statements of ancient voyagers; and there
is now reason to believe that the Patagonians are not _much_ more
outrageous in any respect than ordinary savages elsewhere.
Not long after doubling the Cape, the bottle sailed slowly past the
Falkland Islands, whose rugged cliffs and sterile aspect seemed in
accordance with their character of penal settlement. Sea-lions,
penguins, and seals were more numerous than ever here, as if they were
the guardians of the place, ready to devour all hapless criminals who
should recklessly attempt to swim away from "durance vile."
Indeed, it was owing to the curiosity of a sea-lion that at this point
in its long voyage the bottle was saved from destruction. A storm had
recently swept the southern seas, and the bottle, making bad weather of
it in passing the Falklands, was unexpectedly driven on a lee-shore in
attempting to double a promontory. Whether promontories are more
capable of resisting the bottle than human beings, I know not; but
certain it is that the promontory arrested its progress. It began to
clink along the foot of the cliffs at the outermost point with alarming
violence; and there can be no reasonable doubt that it would have become
a miserable wreck there, if it had not chanced to clink right under the
nose of a sea-lion which was basking in the sunshine, and sound asleep
on a flat rock.
Opening its eyes and ears at the unwonted sound, the lion gazed
inquiringly at the bottle, and raised its shaggy front the better to
inspect it. Apparently the sight stimulated its curiosity, for, with a
roar and a gush of ardent spirit, it plunged into the sea and drove the
bottle far down into the deep.
Finding, apparently, that nothing came of this terrific onslaught, the
lion did not reappear. It sneaked away, no doubt, into some coral cave.
But the force of the push sent the bottle a few yards out to sea, and
so it doubled the promontory and continued its voyage.
Shortly after this, however, a check was put to its progress which
threatened to be permanent.
In a few places of the ocean there are pools of almost stagnant tracts,
of various sizes, which are a sort of eddies caused by the conflicting
currents. They are full of seaweed and other drift, which is shoved
into them by the currents, and are named Sargasso seas. Some of these
are hundreds of miles in extent, others are comparatively small.
They bothered the navigators of old, did those Sargasso seas,
uncommonly. They are permanent spots, which shift their position so
little with the very slight changes in the currents of the sea, that
they may be said to be always in the same place.
Columbus got into one of these Sargassos--the great Atlantic one that
lies between Africa and the West Indies,--and his men were alarmed lest
this strange weedy sea should turn out to be the end of the world!
Columbus was long detained in this region of stagnation and calm, and so
were most of the early navigators, who styled it the "Doldrums."
Now-a-days, however, our knowledge of the currents of ocean and
atmosphere enables us to avoid the Sargasso seas and sail round them,
thereby preventing delay, facilitating trade, saving time, and greatly
improving the condition of mankind.
Now, our bottle happened to get entangled in the weed of the Sargasso
that exists in the neighbourhood of the Falkland Islands, and stuck fast
there for many months. It was heaved up and down by the undulations,
blown about a little by occasional breezes, embraced constantly by
seaweed, and sometimes tossed by waves when the outskirts of a passing
gale broke in upon the stagnant spot; but beyond this it did not move or
advance a mile on its voyage.
At last a hurricane burst over the sea; its whirling edge tore up the
weed and swept the waters, and set the bottle free, at the same time
urging it into a north-easterly current, which flowed towards the coast
of Africa. On its way it narrowly missed entanglement in another
Sargasso,--a little one that lies between the two continents,--but
fortunately passed it in safety, and at last made the Cape of Good Hope,
and sighted the majestic Table Mountain which terminates the lofty
promontory of that celebrated headland.
Here the bottle met with the wild stormy weather that induced its
Portuguese discoverer, Bartholomew Diaz, to name it the "Cape of
Tempests," and which cost him his life, for, on a succeeding voyage, he
perished there. King John the Second of Portugal changed its name into
the Cape of Good Hope, and not inappropriately so, as it turned out;
for, a few years after its discovery in 1486, Vasco de Gama doubled the
Cape of Good Hope and discovered the shores of India, whence he brought
the first instalment of that wealth which has flowed from east to west
ever since in such copious perennial streams.
There was a perplexing conflict of currents here which seemed to
indicate a dispute as to which of them should bear off the bottle. The
great Mozambique current, (which, born in the huge caldron of the Indian
Ocean, flows down the eastern coast of Africa, and meets and wars with
the currents coming from the west), almost got the mastery, and
well-nigh swept it into an extensive Sargasso sea which lies in that
region; in which case the voyage might have been inconceivably delayed;
but an eccentric typhoon, or some such turbulent character, struck in
from the eastward, swept the bottle utterly beyond Mozambique influence,
and left it in the embrace of a current which flowed northward toward
the equator.
Thus the bottle narrowly missed being flung on "India's coral strand,"
and voyaged slowly northward in a line parallel with that coast where
"Afric's sunny fountains roll down their golden sands,"--where slavers,
too, carried off the blacks in days happily gone by, to toil in slavery
among the fields of cotton and sugar-cane, and where British cruisers
did their best, (but that wasn't much!) to prevent the brutal traffic.
The chief point of interest in this part of the voyage was touching at
Saint Helena, touching so sharply on the western promontory of that
dreary islet, that the bottle again nearly made ship-wreck.
Admirably well chosen was this prominent, barren, isolated rock to be
the prison of "Napoleon the Great," for he was a conspicuous, isolated
specimen of humanity, barren of those qualities that constitute real
greatness. Great he undoubtedly was in the art of shedding human blood
and desolating myriads of hearths and hearts without any object whatever
beyond personal ambition; for the First Napoleon being a Corsican, could
not even urge the shallow plea of patriotism in justification of his
murderous career.
So, let the bottle pass! Its career has not been more deadly,
perchance, than was his during the time that the earth was scourged with
his presence!
On reaching the hot region of the equator, our little craft was again
sadly knocked about by conflicting currents, and performed one or two
deep-sea voyages in company with currents which dived a good deal in
consequence of their superior density and inferior heat. At one time it
seemed as if it would be caught by the drift which flows down the east
coast of South America, and thus get back into the seas from which it
set out.
But this was not to be. Owing to some cause which is utterly beyond the
ken of mortals, the bottle at last got fairly into the great equatorial
current which flows westward from the Gulf of Guinea. It reached the
north-west corner of South America, and progressing now at a more rapid
and steady rate, progressed along the northern shore of that continent--
passed the mouth of the mighty Amazon and the Orinoco, and, pushing its
way among the West India Islands, crossed the Carribean Sea, sighted the
Isthmus of Darien, coasted the Bay of Honduras, and swept round the Gulf
of Mexico.
Here the great current is diverted from its westward course, and,
passing through the Gulf of Florida, rushes across the Atlantic in a
north-easterly direction, under the well-known name of the Gulf Stream.
Men of old fancied that this great current had its origin in the Gulf of
Mexico; hence its name; but we now know that, like many another stream,
it has many heads or sources, the streams flowing from which converge in
the Gulf of Mexico, and receive new and united direction there.
With the Gulf Stream the bottle pursued its voyage until it was finally
cast ashore on the west of Ireland. Many a waif of the sea has been
cast there before it by the same cause, and doubtless many another shall
be cast there in time to come.
An Irishman with a jovial countenance chanced to be walking on the beach
at the moment when, after a voyage of two years, our bottle touched the
strand.
He picked it up and eyed it curiously.
"Musha! but it's potheen."
A more careful inspection caused him to shake his head.
"Ah, then, it's impty."
Getting the bottle between his eyes and the morning sun, he screwed his
visage up into myriads of wrinkles, and exclaimed--
"Sure there _is_ something in it."
Straightway the Irishman hurried up to his own cabin, where his own
wife, a stout pretty woman in a red cloak, assisted him to reach the
conclusion that there was something mysterious in the bottle, which was
at all events not drinkable.
"Oh, then, I'll smash it."
"Do, darlint."
No sooner said than done, for Pat brought it down on the hearthstone
with such force that it was shivered to atoms.
Of course his wife seized the bit of paper, and tried to read it,
unsuccessfully. Then Pat tried to read it, also unsuccessfully. Then
they both tried to read it, turning it in every conceivable direction,
and holding it at every possible distance from their eyes, but still
without success. Then they came to the conclusion that they could "make
nothing of it at all at all," which was not surprising, for neither of
them could read a word.
They wisely resolved at length to take it to their priest, who not only
read it, but had it inserted in the _Times_ on the week following, and
also in the local papers of Wreckumoft.
Thus did Mrs Gaff, at long last, come to learn something of her husband
and son. Her friends kindly told her she need not entertain any hope
whatever, but she heeded them not; and only regarding the message from
the sea as in some degree a confirmation of her hopes and expectations,
she continued her preparations for the reception of the long absent ones
with more energy than ever.