The winds of North and South are, as I have said, but small princes
amongst the powers of the sea. They have no territory of their own; they
are not reigning winds anywhere. Yet it is from their houses that the
reigning dynasties which have shared between them the waters of the earth
are sprung. All the weather of the world is based upon the contest of
the Polar and Equatorial strains of that tyrannous race. The West Wind
is the greatest king. The East rules between the Tropics. They have
shared each ocean between them. Each has his genius of supreme rule.
The King of the West never intrudes upon the recognised dominion of his
kingly brother. He is a barbarian, of a northern type. Violent without
craftiness, and furious without malice, one may imagine him seated
masterfully with a double-edged sword on his knees upon the painted and
gilt clouds of the sunset, bowing his shock head of golden locks, a
flaming beard over his breast, imposing, colossal, mighty-limbed, with a
thundering voice, distended cheeks and fierce blue eyes, urging the speed
of his gales. The other, the East king, the king of blood-red sunrises,
I represent to myself as a spare Southerner with clear-cut features,
black-browed and dark-eyed, gray-robed, upright in sunshine, resting a
smooth-shaven cheek in the palm of his hand, impenetrable, secret, full
of wiles, fine-drawn, keen—meditating aggressions.
The West Wind keeps faith with his brother, the King of the Easterly
weather. “What we have divided we have divided,” he seems to say in his
gruff voice, this ruler without guile, who hurls as if in sport enormous
masses of cloud across the sky, and flings the great waves of the
Atlantic clear across from the shores of the New World upon the hoary
headlands of Old Europe, which harbours more kings and rulers upon its
seamed and furrowed body than all the oceans of the world together.
“What we have divided we have divided; and if no rest and peace in this
world have fallen to my share, leave me alone. Let me play at quoits
with cyclonic gales, flinging the discs of spinning cloud and whirling
air from one end of my dismal kingdom to the other: over the Great Banks
or along the edges of pack-ice—this one with true aim right into the
bight of the Bay of Biscay, that other upon the fiords of Norway, across
the North Sea where the fishermen of many nations look watchfully into my
angry eye. This is the time of kingly sport.”
And the royal master of high latitudes sighs mightily, with the sinking
sun upon his breast and the double-edged sword upon his knees, as if
wearied by the innumerable centuries of a strenuous rule and saddened by
the unchangeable aspect of the ocean under his feet—by the endless vista
of future ages where the work of sowing the wind and reaping the
whirlwind shall go on and on till his realm of living waters becomes a
frozen and motionless ocean. But the other, crafty and unmoved, nursing
his shaven chin between the thumb and forefinger of his slim and
treacherous hand, thinks deep within his heart full of guile: “Aha! our
brother of the West has fallen into the mood of kingly melancholy. He is
tired of playing with circular gales, and blowing great guns, and
unrolling thick streamers of fog in wanton sport at the cost of his own
poor, miserable subjects. Their fate is most pitiful. Let us make a
foray upon the dominions of that noisy barbarian, a great raid from
Finisterre to Hatteras, catching his fishermen unawares, baffling the
fleets that trust to his power, and shooting sly arrows into the livers
of men who court his good graces. He is, indeed, a worthless fellow.”
And forthwith, while the West Wind meditates upon the vanity of his
irresistible might, the thing is done, and the Easterly weather sets in
upon the North Atlantic.
The prevailing weather of the North Atlantic is typical of the way in
which the West Wind rules his realm on which the sun never sets. North
Atlantic is the heart of a great empire. It is the part of the West
Wind’s dominions most thickly populated with generations of fine ships
and hardy men. Heroic deeds and adventurous exploits have been performed
there, within the very stronghold of his sway. The best sailors in the
world have been born and bred under the shadow of his sceptre, learning
to manage their ships with skill and audacity before the steps of his
stormy throne. Reckless adventurers, toiling fishermen, admirals as wise
and brave as the world has ever known, have waited upon the signs of his
westerly sky. Fleets of victorious ships have hung upon his breath. He
has tossed in his hand squadrons of war-scarred three-deckers, and
shredded out in mere sport the bunting of flags hallowed in the
traditions of honour and glory. He is a good friend and a dangerous
enemy, without mercy to unseaworthy ships and faint-hearted seamen. In
his kingly way he has taken but little account of lives sacrificed to his
impulsive policy; he is a king with a double-edged sword bared in his
right hand. The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly
weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind
his back for a treacherous stab.
In his forays into the North Atlantic the East Wind behaves like a subtle
and cruel adventurer without a notion of honour or fair play. Veiling
his clear-cut, lean face in a thin layer of a hard, high cloud, I have
seen him, like a wizened robber sheik of the sea, hold up large caravans
of ships to the number of three hundred or more at the very gates of the
English Channel. And the worst of it was that there was no ransom that
we could pay to satisfy his avidity; for whatever evil is wrought by the
raiding East Wind, it is done only to spite his kingly brother of the
West. We gazed helplessly at the systematic, cold, gray-eyed obstinacy
of the Easterly weather, while short rations became the order of the day,
and the pinch of hunger under the breast-bone grew familiar to every
sailor in that held-up fleet. Every day added to our numbers. In knots
and groups and straggling parties we flung to and fro before the closed
gate. And meantime the outward-bound ships passed, running through our
humiliated ranks under all the canvas they could show. It is my idea
that the Easterly Wind helps the ships away from home in the wicked hope
that they shall all come to an untimely end and be heard of no more. For
six weeks did the robber sheik hold the trade route of the earth, while
our liege lord, the West Wind, slept profoundly like a tired Titan, or
else remained lost in a mood of idle sadness known only to frank natures.
All was still to the westward; we looked in vain towards his stronghold:
the King slumbered on so deeply that he let his foraging brother steal
the very mantle of gold-lined purple clouds from his bowed shoulders.
What had become of the dazzling hoard of royal jewels exhibited at every
close of day? Gone, disappeared, extinguished, carried off without
leaving a single gold band or the flash of a single sunbeam in the
evening sky! Day after day through a cold streak of heavens as bare and
poor as the inside of a rifled safe a rayless and despoiled sun would
slink shamefacedly, without pomp or show, to hide in haste under the
waters. And still the King slept on, or mourned the vanity of his might
and his power, while the thin-lipped intruder put the impress of his cold
and implacable spirit upon the sky and sea. With every daybreak the
rising sun had to wade through a crimson stream, luminous and sinister,
like the spilt blood of celestial bodies murdered during the night.
In this particular instance the mean interloper held the road for some
six weeks on end, establishing his particular administrative methods over
the best part of the North Atlantic. It looked as if the easterly
weather had come to stay for ever, or, at least, till we had all starved
to death in the held-up fleet—starved within sight, as it were, of
plenty, within touch, almost, of the bountiful heart of the Empire.
There we were, dotting with our white dry sails the hard blueness of the
deep sea. There we were, a growing company of ships, each with her
burden of grain, of timber, of wool, of hides, and even of oranges, for
we had one or two belated fruit schooners in company. There we were, in
that memorable spring of a certain year in the late seventies, dodging to
and fro, baffled on every tack, and with our stores running down to
sweepings of bread-lockers and scrapings of sugar-casks. It was just
like the East Wind’s nature to inflict starvation upon the bodies of
unoffending sailors, while he corrupted their simple souls by an
exasperation leading to outbursts of profanity as lurid as his blood-red
sunrises. They were followed by gray days under the cover of high,
motionless clouds that looked as if carved in a slab of ash-coloured
marble. And each mean starved sunset left us calling with imprecations
upon the West Wind even in its most veiled misty mood to wake up and give
us our liberty, if only to rush on and dash the heads of our ships
against the very walls of our unapproachable home.