beloved of the poet and the painter, appealing by the inimitable grace of their curves and marvel of their motion to all mankind, the waves of the sea take easily their high place with the stars and the mountains as some of the chief glories attendant upon the round world. only an artist, perhaps, could do justice to the multiplicity of lovely lines into which the ruffled surface of the ocean enwreathes itself under the pressure of the storm. yet any one with an eye for the beautiful will find it hard to leave a sight so fair, will watch unweariedly for hours the gliding, curling masses as they rise, apparently in defiance of law, subside and rise again and yet again.
sailors often speak of an “ugly” sea, but the adjective has quite another meaning to that usually attached to it. they do not mean that it is ugly in appearance, for they well know that the beauty of a wave is as much a part of it as is the water—it cannot be otherwise than beautiful, as it cannot cease to be wet. what they mean is a dangerous sea. and by “sea” they always mean wave. a sailor never speaks of a “high wave,” “cross waves,” “heavy waves”; in fact, on board ship, except when passengers are getting information from officers, you will not hear the word “wave” mentioned at all.[192] it is necessary to mention this purely nautical detail to save constant explanation and digression. to return, then, to the sailor’s “ugly” sea. its ugliness may be due to many different causes, but in the result the waves do not run truly with the wind; they rise unexpectedly and confusedly, changing the natural motion of the ship into a bewildered stagger, such as one will sometimes see in a horse when a brutal, foolish driver is beating him over the head and wrenching first at one rein and then the other without knowing himself what he wants the poor brute to do. it is very pitiful, too, to watch a gallant ship being pressed through an ugly, untrue sea—such, for instance, as may be met with in the north atlantic with a south-west gale blowing, and the vessel in the midst of the gulf stream. the conflict between wind and current, all the more terrible for its invisibility, is deep-reaching, so deep that every excuse must be found for those who have spoken of seas running mountains high. as the steady, implacable thrust of the storm booms forth, the black breadths of water rise rebellious; they would fain flow in the face of the wind, but that cannot be. so they rise, sullenly rise, peak-like, against their persecutor, until his might compels them forward against the mighty stream beneath, and their shattered crags and pinnacles tumble in ruinous heaps around.
even this, however, is less dangerous than that time—to be spoken of by those who have seen it, and live, with bated breath—when, rotating like some wheel of the gods, the tropical cyclone whirls across the indian seas. round and round blow the incredibly furious winds, having a centrifugal direction withal, and yet the whole mighty system progresses in some given direction, until towards its centre there is a maelstrom indeed—a space where the wind hath left, as it were, a funnel of calm in the world-tumult. and there the waves hold high revel. heap upon heap the waters rise, without direction, without shape, save that of fortuitous blocks hurled skyward and falling again in ruin. the fountains of the great deep appear to be broken up, and woe to man’s handiwork found straying there in that black hour.
all those who have ever “run the easting down” will remember, but not all pleasurably, the great true sea of the roaring “forties” or “fifties.” how, unhindered in its world-encircling sweep, the premier wind of all comes joyously, unwaveringly, for many a day without a pause, while the good ship flies before it with every wing bearing its utmost strain. in keeping with the wind, the wave—the long, true wave of the southern seas, spreading to infinity on either hand, a gorgeous concave of blue, with its direction as straightly at right angles to the ship’s track as if laid by line, and its ridge all glistening like a wreath of new-fallen snow under silver moon or golden sun. it pursues, it overtakes, rises astern with majestic sound as of all the war-chariots of neptune; then, easily passing beneath the buoyant keel, it is gone on ahead, has joined its fellows in their stately progress to the east. adown its far-spreading shoulders stream pennons of white; in the[194] broad valley between it and the next wave the same bright foam creams and hisses until wherever the eye can rest is no longer blue but white—a wilderness of curdling snow just bepatched with azure.
the strong, exultant ship may rejoice in such a scene as this, but it is far otherwise with the weakling. caught up in this irresistible march of wind and wave, she feels that her place is otherwhere; it is not hers to strive with giants, but to abide by the stuff. then do the hapless mariners in charge watch carefully for a time when they may lay her to, watch the waves’ sequence, knowing that every third wave is greater, and leaves a broader valley of smooth behind it than its fellows; while some say that with the third sequence of three—the ninth wave—these differences are at their maximum. why? who knows? certain it is that some waves are heavier than others, and equally certain it is that in the case of a truly running sea these heavier seas appear at regularly recurrent intervals of three. and that is all sailors know. sufficient too, perhaps, as with their weak and overladen ship they watch the smooth, to swing her up between two rolling ranges of water, and without shipping more than thirty or forty tons or so, heave her to, her head just quartering the oncoming waves, and all danger of being overwhelmed by them removed.
curious indeed are the waves to be found over uneven bottoms with strong undercurrents—as, for instance, on the coast of nova scotia—and known as “overfalls.” sufficiently annoying to vessels of large size that get among them, they are most dangerous to small craft. the water rises in masses perpendicularly, and falls a dead weight without apparent forward motion—a puzzling, deadly sea to meet when a howling gale is driving your small vessel across those angry waters. but the overfall character is common to nearly all waves raised in shallow seas and tidal streams. it adds to the dangers of navigation immensely, and although the eye must be charmed when from the lofty cliff we see the green-bosomed, hoary-shouldered wave come thundering shoreward, we need not expect those to greet him lovingly who must do so in weakness and undefended.
what of the tidal wave; that mysterious indispensable swelling of the waters that, following the “pull” of the moon, rolls round this globe of ours twice in each twenty-four hours, stemming the outflow of mighty rivers, penetrating far inland wherever access is available, and doing within its short lease of life an amount of beneficent work freely that would beggar the wealthiest monarchy of the world to undertake if it must needs be paid for? mysterious it may well be called, since, though its passage from zone to zone be so swift, it is, like all other waves, but an undulatory movement of that portion of the sea momentarily influenced by the suasion of the planet—not, as is vulgarly supposed, the same mass of water vehemently carried onward for thousands of miles. no; just as a tightly stretched sheet of calico shows an undulation if the point of a stick be[196] passed along beneath its surface and pressed upward against it, an undulation which leaves every fibre where it was originally, so does the whole surface remain in its place while the long, long wave rolls round the world carrying up to their moorings the homeward-bound ships, sweetening mud-befouled tidal harbours, and giving to forlorn breadths of deserted shallows all the glory and vitality of the youthful sea.
to meet a tidal wave at sea is in some parts of the watery world a grim and unforgettable experience. floating upon the shining blue plain, with an indolent swelling of the surface just giving a cosy roll to your ship now and then, you suddenly see in the distance a ridge, a knoll of water that advances vast, silent, menacing. nearer and nearer it comes, rearing its apparently endless curve higher and higher. there is no place to flee from before its face. neither is there much suspense. for its pace is swift, although it appears so deliberate, from the illimitable grandeur of its extent. it is upon the ship. she behaves in accordance with the way she has been caught and her innate peculiarities. in any case, whatever her bulk, she is hurled forward, upward, backward, downward, as if never again could she regain an even keel, while her crew cling desperately to whatever holding-place they may have reached, lest they should be dashed into dead pieces.
some will have it that these marvellous upliftings of the sea-bosom are not tidal waves at all—that they do not belong to that normal ebb and flow of the ocean that owns the sway of the moon. if so, they would be met with more frequently than they are at sea, and far more disasters would be placed to their account. this contention seems reasonable, because it is well known that lonely islets such as st. helena, tristan d’acunha, and ascension are visited at irregular intervals by a succession of appalling waves (rollers) that deal havoc among the smaller shipping, and look as if they would overwhelm the land. the suggestion is that these stupendous waves are due to cosmic disturbance, to submarine earthquakes upheaving the ocean-bed and causing so vast a displacement of the ocean that its undulations extend for several thousands of miles.
as to the speed of waves, judging from all experience, they would seem never to exceed sixteen to eighteen knots an hour in their hugest forms. and yet it is well known that they will often outstrip the gale that gave them birth, let it rage never so furiously. lying peacefully rolling upon the smoothest of summer seas, you shall presently find, without any alteration in the weather, the vessel’s motion change from its soothing roll to a sharp, irritable, and irritating movement. and, looking overside, there may be seen the forerunners of the storm that is raging hundreds of miles away, the hurrying waves that it has driven in its path. so likewise, long hours after a gale is over, the waves it has raised roll on, still reluctant to resume their levelled peace, and should a new gale arise in some contrary direction, the “old” sea, as the sailor calls it, will persist, making the striving ship’s progress full of weariness and unease to those on board. of the energy of waves, of the lessons they teach, their immutable mutability, and other things concerning them that leap to the mind, no word can now be spoken, for space is spent.
