第6章 CHAPTER I(3)

In latitude 19degrees,longitude 25degrees,we first fell in with flying fish.These are usually in flocks,and are seen in greatest abundance in the morning;they fly a great way and very well,not with the kind of jump which a fish takes when springing out of the water,but with a bona fide flight,sometimes close to the water,sometimes some feet above it.One flew on board,and measured roughly eighteen inches between the tips of its wings.On Saturday,November 5,the trades left us suddenly after a thunder-storm,which gave us an opportunity of seeing chain lightning,which I only remember to have seen once in England.As soon as the storm was over,we perceived that the wind was gone,and knew that we had entered that unhappy region of calms which extends over a belt of some five degrees rather to the north of the line.

We knew that the weather about the line was often calm,but had pictured to ourselves a gorgeous sun,golden sunsets,cloudless sky,and sea of the deepest blue.On the contrary,such weather is never known there,or only by mistake.It is a gloomy region.Sombre sky and sombre sea.

Large cauliflower-headed masses of dazzling cumulus tower in front of a background of lavender-coloured satin.There are clouds of every shape and size.The sails idly flap as the sea rises and falls with a heavy regular but windless swell.Creaking yards and groaning rudder seem to lament that they cannot get on.The horizon is hard and black,save when blent softly into the sky upon one quarter or another by a rapidly approaching squall.A puff of wind--"Square the yards!"--the ship steers again;another--she moves slowly onward;it blows--she slips through the water;it blows hard--she runs very hard--she flies;a drop of rain--the wind lulls;three or four more of the size of half a crown--it falls very light;it rains hard,and then the wind is dead--whereon the rain comes down in a torrent which those must see who would believe.

The air is so highly charged with moisture that any damp thing remains damp and any dry thing dampens:the decks are always wet.Mould springs up anywhere,even on the very boots which one is wearing;the atmosphere is like that of a vapour bath,and the dense clouds seem to ward off the light,but not the heat,of the sun.The dreary monotony of such weather affects the spirits of all,and even the health of some.

One poor girl who had long been consumptive,but who apparently had rallied much during the voyage,seemed to give way suddenly as soon as we had been a day in this belt of calms,and four days after,we lowered her over the ship's side into the deep.

One day we had a little excitement in capturing a shark,whose triangular black fin had been veering about above water for some time at a little distance from the ship.I will not detail a process that has so often been described,but will content myself with saying that he did not die unavenged,inasmuch as he administered a series of cuffs and blows to anyone that was near him which would have done credit to a prize-fighter,and several of the men got severe handling or,I should rather say,"tailing"from him.He was accompanied by two beautifully striped pilot fish--the never-failing attendants of the shark.

One day during this calm we fell in with a current,when the aspect of the sea was completely changed.It resembled a furiously rushing river,and had the sound belonging to a strong stream,only much intensified;the waves,too,tossed up their heads perpendicularly into the air;whilst the empty flour-casks drifted ahead of us and to one side.It was impossible to look at the sea without noticing its very singular appearance.Soon a wind springing up raised the waves and obliterated the more manifest features of the current,but for two or three days afterwards we could perceive it more or less.There is always at this time of year a strong westerly set here.The wind was the commencement of the S.E.trades,and was welcomed by all with the greatest pleasure.

In two days more we reached the line.

We crossed the line far too much to the west,in longitude 31degrees 6minutes,after a very long passage of nearly seven weeks,such as our captain says he never remembers to have made;fine winds,however,now began to favour us,and in another week we got out of the tropics,having had the sun vertically overhead,so as to have no shadow,on the preceding day.Strange to say,the weather was never at all oppressively hot after latitude 2degrees north,or thereabouts.A fine wind,or indeed a light wind,at sea removes all unpleasant heat even of the hottest and most perpendicular sun.The only time that we suffered any inconvenience at all from heat was during the belt of calms;when the sun was vertically over our heads it felt no hotter than on an ordinary summer day.Immediately,however,upon leaving the tropics the cold increased sensibly,and in latitude 27degrees 8minutes I find that I was not warm once all day.Since then we have none of us ever been warm,save when taking exercise or in bed;when the thermometer was up at 50degrees we thought it very high and called it warm.The reason of the much greater cold of the southern than of the northern hemisphere is that the former contains so much less land.I have not seen the thermometer below 42degrees in my cabin,but am sure that outside it has often been very much lower.We almost all got chilblains,and wondered much what the winter of this hemisphere must be like if this was its summer:I believe,however,that as soon as we get off the coast of Australia,which I hope we may do in a couple of days,we shall feel a very sensible rise in the thermometer at once.Had we known what was coming,we should have prepared better against it,but we were most of us under the impression that it would be warm summer weather all the way.No doubt we felt it more than we should otherwise on account of our having so lately crossed the line.