Shifting Winds - Robert Michael Ballantyne (poetry books to read TXT) 📗

breakwater, sending clouds of spray over their head, insomuch that, ere morning, the boat was nearly half full of water.

When morning at last broke, father and son were so much exhausted that they could scarcely sit up, and their cramped fingers clung, more by necessity than by voluntary effort, to the garments of the now dying man.

Graddy was still active and watchful, however. His face was awful to look upon, and the fire of his restless eyes was unabated. When the sun rose above the horizon both Gaff and Billy turned their weary eyes to look at it. The madman noted the action, and seized the opportunity. He sprang with an unearthly yell, overturned them both, and plunged head foremost into the sea.

Twice he rose and gave vent to a loud gurgling cry, while Gaff and his son seized the rope attached to the oars, intending to pull them in and row to his assistance, for he had leaped so far out that he was beyond their reach. But before they had pulled in half of the cable the wretched man had disappeared from their view for ever.

Slacking off the rope they let the boat drift astern again to its full extent. Then, without a word, without even a look, father and son lay down together in the stern-sheets, and were instantly buried in a profound deathlike slumber.


CHAPTER TWENTY.


THE VOYAGE OF THE BOTTLE.

The little fragile craft which Stephen Gaff sent adrift upon the world of waters freighted with its precious document, began its long voyage with no uncertainty as to its course, although to the eye of man it might have appeared to be the sport of uncertain waves and breezes.

When the bottle fell upon the broad bosom of the South Pacific, it sank as if its career were to end at the beginning; but immediately it re-appeared with a leap, as if the imprisoned spirit of the atmosphere were anxious to get out. Then it settled down in its watery bed until nothing but the neck and an inch of the shoulder was visible above the surface. Thus it remained; thus it floated in the deep, in storm and calm, in heat and cold; thus it voyaged more safely, though not more swiftly, than all the proud ships that spread their lofty canvas to the breeze, night and day, for weeks and months, ay, and years together--not irregularly, not at haphazard, but steadily, perseveringly, in strict obedience to the undeviating laws which regulate the currents in the ocean and the air as truly and unchangeably as they do the circulation of the blood in the human frame.

The bottle started from that part of the South Pacific which is known to mariners as the Desolate Region--so called from the circumstance of that part of the sea being almost entirely destitute of animal life. Here it floated slowly, calmly, but surely, to the eastward with the great oceanic current, which, flowing from the regions of the antarctic sea, in that part sweeps round the southern continent of America, and makes for the equator by way of the southern Atlantic Ocean.

Now, reader, allow me to screw up a little philosophy here, and try to show you the why and the wherefore of the particular direction of our bottle's voyage.

Man has been defined by some lexicographer as a "cooking animal." I think it would be more appropriate to call him a _learning animal_, for man does not always cook, but he never ceases to learn--also to unlearn.

One of the great errors which we have been called on, of recent years, to unlearn, is the supposed irregularity and uncertainty of the winds and waves. Nothing is more regular, nothing more certain--not even the rising and setting of the sun himself--than the circulation of the waters and the winds of earth. The apparent irregularity and uncertainty lies in our limited power and range of perception. The laws by which God regulates the winds and waves are as fixed as is the law of gravitation, and every atom of air, every drop of water, moves in its appointed course in strict obedience to those laws, just as surely as the apple, when severed from the bough, obeys the law of gravitation, and falls to the ground.

One grand and important fact has been ascertained, namely, that all the waters of the sea flow from the equator to the poles and back again.

Disturbed equilibrium is the great cause of oceanic currents. Heat and cold are the chief agents in creating this disturbance.

It is obvious that when a portion of water in any vessel sinks, another portion must of necessity flow into the space which it has left, and if the cause which induced the sinking continue, so the flow to fill up will continue, and thus a current will be established.

Heat at the equator warms the sea-water, and makes it light; cold at the poles chills it, and makes it heavy. Hot water, being light, rises; cold water, being heavy, sinks.

Here, then, is a sufficient cause to produce the effect of currents in the sea.

But there are other causes at work. Excessive evaporation at the equator carries off the water of the sea, but leaves the salt behind, thus rendering it denser and heavier; while excessive influx of fresh water at the poles, (from rain and snow and melting ice), renders the sea light;--in addition to which corallines and shell-fish everywhere abstract the lime that is in the sea, by secreting it on their bodies in the form of shells, and thus increase the lightness of those particles of water from which the lime has been abstracted. The other particles of water being generous in their nature, hasten to impart of their lime and salt to those that have little or none.

Here, then, we have perpetual motion rendered absolutely certain, both as to continuance and direction.

But the latter causes which I have named are modifying causes which tend to counteract, or rather to deflect and direct currents in their flow. Besides which, the rotation of the earth, the action of the winds, and the conformation of continents and islands, have a powerful influence on currents, so that some flow at the bottom of ocean, some on the surface, some from east to west or west to east, or aslant in various directions, while, where currents meet there is deflection, modification, or stagnation, but there is no confusion; all goes on with a regularity and harmony which inconceivably excels that of the most complex and beautiful mechanism of man's constructing, although man cannot perceive this order and harmony by reason of his limited powers.

Now, these are facts, not theories founded on speculation. They have been arrived at by the slow but sure method of induction. Hundreds of thousands of practical men have for many years been observing and recording phenomena of every kind in connexion with the sea. These observations have been gathered together, collated, examined, and deeply studied by philosophers, who have drawn their conclusions therefrom. Ignorance of these facts rendered the navigation of the sea in days of old a matter of uncertainty and great danger. The knowledge of them and of other cognate facts enables man in these days to map out the so-called trackless ocean into districts, and follow its well-known highways with precision and comparative safety.

Our bottle moved along with the slow but majestic flow of one of those mighty currents which are begotten among the hot isles of the Pacific, where the corallines love to build their tiny dwellings and rear their reefs and groves.

In process of time it left the warm regions of the sun, and entered those stormy seas which hold perpetual war around Cape Horn. It passed the straits where Magellan spread his adventurous sails in days of old, and doubled the cape which Byron, Bougainville, and Cook had doubled long before it.

Ah! well would it be for man if the bottle had never doubled anything but that cape! And alas for man when his sight is doubled, and his crimes and woes are doubled, and his life is halved instead of doubled, by--"the bottle!"

Off Cape Horn our adventurous little craft met with the rough usage from winds and waves that marked the passage of its predecessors. Stormy petrels hovered over it and pecked its neck and cork. Albatrosses stooped inquiringly and flapped their gigantic wings above it. South Sea seals came up from Ocean's caves, and rubbed their furred sides against it. Sea-lions poked it with their grizzly snouts; and penguins sat bolt upright in rows on the sterile islands near the cape, and gazed at it in wonder.

Onward it moved with the north-western drift, and sighted on its left, (on its port bow, to speak nautically), the land of Patagonia, where the early discoverers reported the men to be from six to ten feet high, and the ladies six feet; the latter being addicted to staining their eyelids black, and the former to painting a red circle round their left eyes. These early discoverers failed, however, to tell us why the right eyes of the men were neglected; so we are forced to the conclusion that they were left thus untouched in order that they might wink facetiously with the more freedom. Modern travellers, it would seem, contradict, (as they usually do), many of the statements of ancient voyagers; and there is now reason to believe that the Patagonians are not _much_ more outrageous in any respect than ordinary savages elsewhere.

Not long after doubling the Cape, the bottle sailed slowly past the Falkland Islands, whose rugged cliffs and sterile aspect seemed in accordance with their character of penal settlement. Sea-lions, penguins, and seals were more numerous than ever here, as if they were the guardians of the place, ready to devour all hapless criminals who should recklessly attempt to swim away from "durance vile."

Indeed, it was owing to the curiosity of a sea-lion that at this point in its long voyage the bottle was saved from destruction. A storm had recently swept the southern seas, and the bottle, making bad weather of it in passing the Falklands, was unexpectedly driven on a lee-shore in attempting to double a promontory. Whether promontories are more capable of resisting the bottle than human beings, I know not; but certain it is that the promontory arrested its progress. It began to clink along the foot of the cliffs at the outermost point with alarming violence; and there can be no reasonable doubt that it would have become a miserable wreck there, if it had not chanced to clink right under the nose of a sea-lion which was basking in the sunshine, and sound asleep on a flat rock.

Opening its eyes and ears at the unwonted sound, the lion gazed inquiringly at the bottle, and raised its shaggy front the better to inspect it. Apparently the sight stimulated its curiosity, for, with a roar and a gush of ardent spirit, it plunged into the sea and drove the bottle far down into the deep.

Finding, apparently, that nothing came of this terrific onslaught, the lion did not reappear. It sneaked away, no doubt, into some coral cave. But the force of the push sent the bottle a few yards out to sea, and so it doubled the promontory and continued its voyage.

Shortly after this, however, a check was put to its progress which threatened to be