others. In the middle belt of the earth the Trade Winds reign
supreme, undisputed, like monarchs of long-settled kingdoms, whose

traditional power, checking all undue ambitions, is not so much an
exercise of personal might as the working of long-established

institutions. The intertropical kingdoms of the Trade Winds are
favourable to the ordinary life of a merchantman. The trumpet-call

of strife is seldom borne on their wings to the watchful ears of
men on the decks of ships. The regions ruled by the north-east and

south-east Trade Winds are serene. In a southern-going ship, bound
out for a long voyage, the passage through their dominions is

characterized by a relaxation of strain and vigilance on the part
of the seamen. Those citizens of the ocean feel sheltered under

the aegis of an uncontested law, of an undisputed dynasty. There,
indeed, if anywhere on earth, the weather may be trusted.

Yet not too implicitly. Even in the constitutional realm of Trade
Winds, north and south of the equator, ships are overtaken by

strange disturbances. Still, the easterly winds, and, generally
speaking, the easterly weather all the world over, is characterized

by regularity and persistence.
As a ruler, the East Wind has a remarkablestability; as an invader

of the high latitudes lying under the tumultuous sway of his great
brother, the Wind of the West, he is extremely difficult to

dislodge, by the reason of his cold craftiness and profound
duplicity.

The narrow seas around these isles, where British admirals keep
watch and ward upon the marches of the Atlantic Ocean, are subject

to the turbulent sway of the West Wind. Call it north-west or
south-west, it is all one - a different phase of the same

character, a changed expression on the same face. In the
orientation of the winds that rule the seas, the north and south

directions are of no importance. There are no North and South
Winds of any account upon this earth. The North and South Winds

are but small princes in the dynasties that make peace and war upon
the sea. They never assert themselves upon a vast stage. They

depend upon local causes - the configuration of coasts, the shapes
of straits, the accidents of bold promontories round which they

play their little part. In the polity of winds, as amongst the
tribes of the earth, the real struggle lies between East and West.

XXVI.
The West Wind reigns over the seas surrounding the coasts of these

kingdoms; and from the gateways of the channels, from promontories
as if from watch-towers, from estuaries of rivers as if from

postern gates, from passage-ways, inlets, straits, firths, the
garrison of the Isle and the crews of the ships going and returning

look to the westward to judge by the varied splendours of his
sunset mantle the mood of that arbitrary ruler. The end of the day

is the time to gaze at the kingly face of the Westerly Weather, who
is the arbiter of ships' destinies. Benignant and splendid, or

splendid and sinister, the western sky reflects the hidden purposes
of the royal mind. Clothed in a mantle of dazzling gold or draped

in rags of black clouds like a beggar, the might of the Westerly
Wind sits enthroned upon the westernhorizon with the whole North

Atlantic as a footstool for his feet and the first twinkling stars
making a diadem for his brow. Then the seamen, attentive courtiers

of the weather, think of regulating the conduct of their ships by
the mood of the master. The West Wind is too great a king to be a

dissembler: he is no calculator plotting deep schemes in a sombre
heart; he is too strong for small artifices; there is passion in

all his moods, even in the soft mood of his serene days, in the
grace of his blue sky whose immense and unfathomable tenderness

reflected in the mirror of the sea embraces, possesses, lulls to
sleep the ships with white sails. He is all things to all oceans;

he is like a poet seated upon a throne - magnificent, simple,
barbarous, pensive, generous, impulsive, changeable, unfathomable -

but when you understand him, always the same. Some of his sunsets
are like pageants devised for the delight of the multitude, when

all the gems of the royal treasure-house are displayed above the
sea. Others are like the opening of his royal confidence, tinged

with thoughts of sadness and compassion in a melancholy splendour
meditating upon the short-lived peace of the waters. And I have

seen him put the pent-up anger of his heart into the aspect of the
inaccessible sun, and cause it to glare fiercely" target="_blank" title="ad.凶猛地，残忍地">fiercely like the eye of an

implacable autocrat out of a pale and frightened sky.
He is the war-lord who sends his battalions of Atlantic rollers to

the assault of our seaboard. The compelling voice of the West Wind
musters up to his service all the might of the ocean. At the

bidding of the West Wind there arises a great commotion in the sky
above these Islands, and a great rush of waters falls upon our

shores. The sky of the westerly weather is full of flying clouds,
of great big white clouds coming thicker and thicker till they seem

to stand welded into a solid canopy, upon whose gray face the lower
wrack of the gale, thin, black and angry-looking, flies past with

vertiginous speed. Denser and denser grows this dome of vapours,
descending lower and lower upon the sea, narrowing the horizon

around the ship. And the characteristicaspect of westerly
weather, the thick, gray, smoky and sinister tone sets in,

circumscribing the view of the men, drenching their bodies,
oppressing their souls, taking their breath away with booming

gusts, deafening, blinding, driving, rushing them onwards in a
swaying ship towards our coasts lost in mists and rain.

The caprice of the winds, like the wilfulness of men, is fraught
with the disastrous consequences of self-indulgence. Long anger,

the sense of his uncontrolled power, spoils the frank and generous
nature of the West Wind. It is as if his heart were corrupted by a

malevolent and brooding rancour. He devastates his own kingdom in
the wantonness of his force. South-west is the quarter of the

heavens where he presents his darkened brow. He breathes his rage
in terrificsqualls, and overwhelms his realm with an inexhaustible

welter of clouds. He strews the seeds of anxiety upon the decks of
scudding ships, makes the foam-stripped ocean look old, and

sprinkles with gray hairs the heads of ship-masters in the
homeward-bound ships running for the Channel. The Westerly Wind

asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a
monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most

faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.
The south-westerly weather is the thick weather PAR EXCELLENCE. It

is not the thickness of the fog; it is rather a contraction of the
horizon, a mysterious veiling of the shores with clouds that seem

to make a low-vaulted dungeon around the running ship. It is not
blindness; it is a shortening of the sight. The West Wind does not

say to the seaman, "You shall be blind"; it restricts merely the
range of his vision and raises the dread of land within his breast.

It makes of him a man robbed of half his force, of half his
efficiency. Many times in my life, standing in long sea-boots and

streaming oilskins at the elbow of my commander on the poop of a
homeward-bound ship making for the Channel, and gazing ahead into

the gray and tormented waste, I have heard a weary sigh shape
itself into a studiously casual comment:

"Can't see very far in this weather."
And have made answer in the same low, perfunctory tone

"No, sir."
It would be merely the instinctive voicing of an ever-present

thought associated closely with the consciousness of the land
somewhere ahead and of the great speed of the ship. Fair wind,

fair wind! Who would dare to grumble at a fair wind? It was a
favour of the Western King, who rules masterfully the North

Atlantic from the latitude of the Azores to the latitude of Cape
Farewell. A famous shove this to end a good passage with; and yet,

somehow, one could not muster upon one's lips the smile of a
courtier's gratitude. This favour was dispensed to you from under

an overbearing scowl, which is the true expression of the great
autocrat when he has made up his mind to give a battering to some

ships and to hunt certain others home in one breath of cruelty and
benevolence, equally distracting.

"No, sir. Can't see very far."
Thus would the mate's voice repeat the thought of the master, both

gazing ahead, while under their feet the ship rushes at some twelve
knots in the direction of the lee shore; and only a couple of miles