blackest nights I can remember, she did not disappear. In truth, I
don't fancy that there had ever been much danger of that, but
certainly the experience was noisy and particularly distracting -
and yet it is the memory of a very quiet silence that survives.
XXIV.
For, after all, a gale of wind, the thing of
mighty sound, is
inarticulate. It is man who, in a chance
phrase, interprets the
elemental
passion of his enemy. Thus there is another gale in my
memory, a thing of endless, deep, humming roar,
moonlight, and a
spoken sentence.
It was off that other cape which is always deprived of its title as
the Cape of Good Hope is robbed of its name. It was off the Horn.
For a true expression of dishevelled wildness there is nothing like
a gale in the bright
moonlight of a high latitude.
The ship, brought-to and bowing to
enormous flashing seas,
glistened wet from deck to trucks; her one set sail stood out a
coal-black shape upon the
gloomy blueness of the air. I was a
youngster then, and
suffering from
weariness, cold, and imperfect
oilskins which let water in at every seam. I craved human
companionship, and, coming off the poop, took my place by the side
of the boatswain (a man whom I did not like) in a
comparatively dry
spot where at worst we had water only up to our knees. Above our
heads the
explosive booming gusts of wind passed continuously,
justifying the sailor's
saying "It blows great guns." And just
from that need of human
companionship, being very close to the man,
I said, or rather shouted:
"Blows very hard, boatswain."
His answer was:
"Ay, and if it blows only a little harder things will begin to go.
I don't mind as long as everything holds, but when things begin to
go it's bad."
The note of dread in the shouting voice, the practical truth of
these words, heard years ago from a man I did not like, have
stamped its
peculiarcharacter on that gale.
A look in the eyes of a shipmate, a low murmur in the most
sheltered spot where the watch on duty are huddled together, a
meaning moan from one to the other with a glance at the windward
sky, a sigh of
weariness, a
gesture of
disgust passing into the
keeping of the great wind, become part and
parcel of the gale. The
olive hue of
hurricane clouds presents an
aspectpeculiarly
appalling. The inky
ragged wrack, flying before a nor'-west wind,
makes you dizzy with its
headlong speed that depicts the rush of
the
invisible air. A hard sou'-wester startles you with its close
horizon and its low gray sky, as if the world were a dungeon
wherein there is no rest for body or soul. And there are black
squalls, white squalls,
thunder squalls, and
unexpected gusts that
come without a single sign in the sky; and of each kind no one of
them resembles another.
There is
infinitevariety in the gales of wind at sea, and except
for the
peculiar, terrible, and
mysterious moaning that may be
heard sometimes passing through the roar of a
hurricane - except
for that unforgettable sound, as if the soul of the
universe had
been goaded into a
mournful groan - it is, after all, the human
voice that stamps the mark of human
consciousness upon the
character of a gale.
XXV.
There is no part of the world of coasts, continents, oceans, seas,
straits, capes, and islands which is not under the sway of a
reigning wind, the
sovereign of its
typical weather. The wind
rules the
aspects of the sky and the action of the sea. But no
wind rules unchallenged his realm of land and water. As with the
kingdoms of the earth, there are regions more
turbulent than