THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN
Now we are right out in the Indian Ocean, and it is a bright day with a
certain freshness in the air, instead of that horrible muggy heat that
made us feel so languid when we were in the Red Sea. Look over the
ship's side and watch the rainbow in the spray; that is one of the
prettiest things to see on board. As the vessel cuts through the water
she raises a frill of foam on either side--what the sailors call "a bone
in her mouth." The frill, rising to a continuous wave along the side,
catches the sunlight and a perpetual rainbow dances in it, changing
always but remaining ever. Whew! What a rush! Flying fish. Look at them!
These are the first we have seen so near; when they spring out of the
water like that and skim along in the air they are not doing it for fun,
but to escape a bitter enemy in the water, the bonito, a ferocious large
fish who preys upon them; he is their chief foe, but there are many
others also. They curve up all together like a glittering bow and
slither down again. In dropping back into the sea they make a kind of
pattering noise, though, of course, we are too far to hear it, and the
fishermen in the small islands near India make use of this in trying to
catch the bonito. They go out in boats specially built for the purpose,
with a kind of platform overhanging the stern; here they sit and make a
splashing with their paddles, at the same time using some little fish,
which they catch and breed in tanks, for bait. The noise attracts the
large fish, who think there is a shoal of the small fry about, and they
jump at the bait and are caught. The catch is often very good, and the
boats come back to the huts laden with the ogre fish, destined to be
eaten in their turn!
Have you ever thought what it must be like right down there in the deeps
below the green water? We can't see because of the light striking the
surface, but if we had a water-glass we could. This is a wooden funnel
like that made of paper by village shopkeepers to roll up soft sugar in.
At the broad end is a piece of strong glass, which is thrust under the
water, and by peering through the small end it is possible to make out
what is happening below if it is not too deep; anyway, we are too high
up out of the water to use one here even if we had it, but in a boat
near the coral reefs and islands there are wonderful things to be seen
by the help of one of these glasses.
If you dropped a stone overboard here it would sink and sink gradually
for about two miles, until it found a resting-place on a slimy bottom of
ooze in a strange dark place. You have a pretty good idea of what a mile
is from running in the school races; in imagination set it up on end,
and add another to it, and then think of that stone sinking that
distance into the grey water! Down there it must be quite dark, for the
mass of water above cuts off the sunlight like a black curtain. There
are many beasts living there, nevertheless; lobsters and other
shell-fish as well as fish, and in a great many cases those that have
been examined are found to have no eyes; it is probable that they have
lost their eyesight in the course of many generations, because it would
be no help to them in getting a living in those black depths. The
subject is not fully understood yet, because _some_ deep-sea fishes have
exceptionally good sight, but these may possibly live higher up in the
water, where there is a certain amount of glare, and then their eyes
would become sharpened by necessity.
[Illustration: DEEP-SEA FISH.]
The bed of the ocean is not a level plain; if you could see it emptied
of all water, you would discover that the land slopes down, sometimes
gradually and sometimes with terrific precipices from the shores, and
that at the mouths of great rivers there are great banks of mud brought
down by the current and piled up, making a fat living for innumerable
sea-creatures. But at the very bottom, in this carpet of slime, there
are no weeds, or as we might call them sea-vegetables, for they cannot
live altogether without light, so the creatures which have their home in
what to us would seem this cheerless, miserable retreat, must live on
one another. They are differently built from surface fish, because they
have always resting upon them the weight of an enormous pile of water.
Picture a pyramid of water two miles high resting on anybody. It would
crush him to atoms; but the fish and crustacea down there are used to
it, and fitted by nature to support it, and so, if they are brought up
to the surface by any means, they burst! In deep-sea trawling it is
quite a common occurrence to see fishes literally burst open, with their
eyes protruding from the sockets, and this annoys the fishermen, because
they are of no use for the market in that condition. It is difficult to
imagine creatures unable to live without a great weight resting on them,
but as a matter of fact it is the same thing with us in a less degree.
There is a column of air some miles high resting on every one of us, and
if we could imagine ourselves lifted out of it into space, our heads
would throb, and our eyes would burst out, and we should be as helpless
as a deep-sea fish brought up to the surface.
As for light, they have strange methods down there in the black depths.
A great many of the deep-sea inhabitants carry their own lights, for
they are more or less luminous, shining by internal light as glow-worms
and fire-flies do. One extraordinary fish has a row of shiny spots
stretching from his head to his tail, and when he is swimming about he
must look like a liner with a lighted row of ship's ports stretching
along his side. Even lobsters and crabs shine luminously, and what use
it is to them when they are frequently blind it is hard to conjecture;
it must have something to do with catching prey, who are perhaps not
blind and may be attracted by the lights. There is at least one fish who
hangs out what is like a red lantern, only it is the tip of his fin, and
by this means he draws to himself small creatures who swim right into
his capacious mouth; thus his dinner comes to him without his having to
search for it!
I want to go to the bows, for it never seems to me I am in a ship until
I can get to a place where there is nothing to shut one in. These modern
liners are horribly shut in, one might as well be in a drawing-room most
of the time. Here we are at last, and it is good to draw a deep breath,
feeling the huge dome of the sky above and the wide rim of the horizon
around with nothing to cut them off. Look down where the ship cleaves
the sea with her bows cleanly and beautifully like a living thing.
Hullo! there is a dolphin! We are in luck! Can you see him dancing round
us and plunging in under water and coming up again, much as a dog does
on land when he goes out for a walk with his master? There is another,
and another! What they call a shoal. They go fast enough; I expect we
are making about fifteen or sixteen knots, or miles, an hour, which is
good going, and yet these little chaps swim round and round, cutting
across ahead of us, diving under us and coming up again all the time; to
them it is mere child's play, and they really are playing; they are full
of fun, and there is no earthly reason why they should behave like that
except for amusement!
[Illustration: A DOLPHIN.]
There goes the bugle for lunch.
Seems early, you say? As if we had only just finished breakfast? Yes.
Look at your watch. It is hopelessly wrong, of course; so is mine and
everyone else's. We are going just about due east now, so we are meeting
the sun half-way, so to speak. That is what makes the time different.
You know that when the sun is at the highest point overhead at any place
then it is midday, and as the earth spins round from west to east a
constant succession of places come beneath him in turn, each getting
their midday a little later than the one before. In the British Isles
there is really very little difference between the hours when the
eastern and western coasts meet the sun. Take Yarmouth, say, and Land's
End; there is perhaps something like half an hour between them, but as
it would be awkward for railway work and business if every place had a
little different time, so, for convenience' sake, one "standard" time is
adopted in England, Scotland, and now even in some of the nearest
continental countries; this is the hour when the sun is highest above
Greenwich, where is our greatest observatory. And this is called midday,
even though as a matter of fact the real midday at different places may
be earlier or later.
As we journey east across the world, however, we are constantly going
forward to meet the sun. We are not only on the earth, which is turning
round all the time, but we are going ahead ourselves as well, and
out-running the earth, and so we arrive at noon sooner and sooner each
day. Our watches of course take no heed of _real_ time as judged by the
sun, they are just mechanical and tick away their sixty minutes to each
hour whether the sun is overhead or not. At this moment we are about
four hours ahead of our friends in England. It is one o'clock here, but
they will only be having breakfast! When we live always in one place it
is easy to forget that we are on a ball spinning round in space, but
this brings it home to us and makes us realise our absurd position in
the universe. Well, let us get our lunch. There is one thing on board,
everybody is always ready to eat an amazing amount after they have got
over sea-sickness, and the number of meals we manage to consume here
would surprise us at home!
As the evening closes in, the day undergoes a change; there is a thick
bank of black-looking cloud in the west, and just as the sun goes down
this breaks up into wild streamers and shows deep ragged gulfs of livid
light between; there are glimpses of green and tawny-red and angry
orange flashing through, and then the veil of cloud blots out the light.
Yet it is still, there doesn't seem to be a ripple of wind, and the sea
has a curious oily calm upon it. Would you like to come along to the
bows after dinner? Don't, if you don't want to. It is more difficult to
get there than we expected, for though it looks so calm there is a big
swell, and we are rising and falling considerably on the smooth-backed
hillocks of water. Creep under these ropes and over this barricade. Then
we are free from all the entanglements. There are no dolphins now, but
there is a strange light dancing away like fire from the cutting bow; it
comes in streaks and flashes, one moment it seems as if it must be only
a reflection in the cut water, and the next one could swear there was a
real flash.
That is phosphorescence, which is very common in tropical seas,
sometimes the whole sea is alight with it. Look at that! It is a vivid
light like a wave of green fire, most beautiful! It is only, however,
where the ship strikes the water that we see it to-night. But sometimes,
though not often at this season of the year, the whole ocean seems to be
alight with it; it is the effect of innumerable millions of tiny
sea-creatures floating on the surface, though exactly why they do it at
one time more than another is yet unknown. The curious thing is that
there are so many different kinds of phosphorescence; there is the
bright fiery kind like this we are seeing now in flashes, and there is a
dull luminous kind which sailors call a "white sea." Then the whole sea
appears as white as milk, or, as someone who has seen it describes it,
as if it were changed to ice covered with a coating of snow. This was on
a dark night before the moon had risen, but when she did get up it all
disappeared and the sea looked much as usual, glittering only where the
beams struck it, except for odd patches of shiny light here and there,
and oddly enough exactly the same thing happened the following night.
I'm afraid we shan't be lucky enough to see that.
Is the motion making you uncomfortable? No? I'm glad of that; you're a
first-rate sailor. Let us go back to that jolly alcove at the end of the
smoking-room looking aft, where we can see the great green-black waves
rising suddenly behind us.
Yes, this is distinctly comfortable and quite interesting. It seems as
if every wave rose in a great hill suddenly just after we had passed the
spot! We must have come over it, but sitting like this we didn't feel
it, we are riding so smoothly.
If we look out ahead we shall see the same sort of thing happening; we
approach a black hillock of water, and just as we get to it it rolls
down and disappears under us. The ship is so large that though she
climbs those hills, we get the impression that the hills straighten
underneath her. You must have noticed something of the same kind in
riding a bicycle; if you are running down one hill and see another
rising in front, the other one looks terrifically steep, but as you get
on to it, it flattens out in an inexplicable way; it is the change in
our own position that accounts for the phenomenon.
It is very close to-night and there is an uneasy feeling in the air; the
captain did not appear at dinner. It is a good thing that they put off
that fancy-dress ball which was to have been held this evening, for
there could not have been much dancing. Your costume will come in useful
another time. I want to see you sometime as a little Egyptian with a
skull-cap and a garment like a flannel night-shirt! But we shall have
another chance.
"Hope we're not in for a cyclone," says one of the men, appearing out of
the smoking-room with a pipe in his mouth.
"Very unusual at this time of year in the North-East monsoon," replies
another as they disappear.
At that moment forked lightning plays across the sky in a great ragged
streak, and immediately there is another display as if answering it,
but we can hear no thunder.
What is the North-East monsoon? It sounds rather like some kind of
animal, but it is only the name given to a certain wind that blows
always at one season of the year.
Across broad spaces of the ocean there are always steady winds to be
counted on, such as the trade-winds, which are caused by the air at the
Equator getting hot and rising, and being replaced by the cold air from
the Poles which rushes in; besides this there are other winds which blow
half the year, called monsoons, these are due to very much the same
causes. The North-East monsoon comes in the northern winter; the air
from the North Pole coming down slowly is met by the earth as she turns,
and as she rushes into it she makes it a north-eastern wind; this,
coming over the land from the north, is a dry wind, while the other one,
the South-Western monsoon, coming from the south over the ocean in the
other half of the year, is a wet wind and brings the rain which is such
a boon to India.
The lightning is continually playing, and I shouldn't be surprised if we
are on the edge of a cyclone, but with a big ship like this, and a
captain who knows his business, there is nothing to be afraid of. These
cyclones, which are called typhoons in the China seas, are curious
storms which twist round and round in a circle, all the time progressing
onward too, and the danger is in getting into the middle of one, for
there, as you may imagine, the wind comes from all quarters at once, and
the waves are piled up on all sides like huge overhanging pyramids. I've
never been in the middle of one, I'm thankful to say, but those who
have, and have escaped with their lives, say that the ship is buffeted
as if by mighty billows which smack down upon her from all directions.
Sometimes there is seen a space of blue sky, and there is a great calm,
but this to the commander is the most ominous sign of all, for he knows
he must be in the centre funnel of the storm, so to speak, and that it
will be worse for him directly!
We had better go to bed, there's nothing else to do.
Are you awake? Yes, I thought even you could hardly sleep through that!
What a smack! It sounds as if the heavens had opened and a water-spout
had descended on deck! What a roar! Can you hear me? All right, come in
here beside me if you like, but there is precious little room. It seems
as if every noise on the ocean had been let loose. The rain must be
simply one great volume of water, and the thunder----Even through our
port-hole the cabin is as light as day with the lightning; it is just
two o'clock in the morning. The thunder seems to come absolutely
instantaneously with the lightning; we must be right in it! I never
heard such crashes. One minute our heads are down below our feet and the
next we are almost standing on end. Hang on! We shall probably get
through all right, this noise doesn't mean anything very bad. But I
thank my stars I'm not an officer on the bridge. How they ever manage to
keep on their feet I don't know, much less how they give directions. One
man told me that he was once in such a sea that when he was pitched off
his feet into one end of the bridge he hadn't time to recover himself
before the same pitch came again and sent him down just as he was trying
to get up! At any time the life at sea is hard, but doubly so in a storm
like this! Hour after hour it goes on. I don't suppose anyone has slept
through this, and many must be feeling very ill. We are lucky to be
spared that!
Next morning, though the lightning had ceased, the wind is terrific, it
goes screeching past, and the rain comes down in buckets; with great
difficulty we get into our clothes and scramble up to the smoking-room.
It is a miserable day and very few of the passengers appear, but by the
afternoon the worst is over, and we can get out into our alcove. We are
still labouring heavily in a blue-black sea, and can see a very little
way as we are surrounded by mountains of water. Hurrah! There is a cleft
over in the east, which means the storm is breaking. Our captain knows
the law of cyclones and has judged rightly which way to turn to get out
of the track of the storm. We have passed through a corner of it, and
though we have got out of our course, that won't mean much delay.
Anyway, you've had an experience very few people have had, for there are
few indeed of all the thousands who go to India who have ever been in
the tail of a cyclone! It is most unusual, but in these seas one never
knows what will happen.
[Illustration: A NATIVE VILLAGE.]