NIGHT.

Northern Advocate, 8 May 1914, Page 5

NIGHT.

"V" in the Beaufort scale stands for "visibility of distant objects,' , and as sunset came the land on Pinisterre was unnaturally distinct. Farmhouses, trees, even cows, could be distinguished, but all the time there reigned the flattest of calms. Night came, at first merely black as Erebus, but, as the hours passed, the ship's forefoot began to lift to the lcng swell from the northward and eastward; and following the swell came the wind. It is not very often that the Bay of Biscay shows what it can do with the wind in this Quarter, but, when it does, things happen. Looking out ahead as the wind rose in a gathering and menacing crescendo, the prospect was so little assuring that storm sails were bent. Two hours passed, the engines, quite useless, were stopped, and the wind was trying conclusions with "No. 1" canvas. Helm hard alee she "gave best" td the storm. On the upgrade of the monstrous seas that now raced down upon her, she climbed sideways, wearily and crabwise. On the summits, torn and tormented by the gale, she shipped water, not spray, but green; then she fell like a plummet into the trough. Not that she was making bad w-eather; it was only her way; for every ship, great and small, has her moods that she adapts to circumstances. An inky darkness, spouting; scuppers, the crash of the seas as they came inboard, the foaming: passage of the waist-deep water along the deck, here and there an oil-skin-ned figure of one of the watch clinging like a limpet to belaying pin or backstay, were the conditions inboard. Once the sea made a snatch, and a twenty-five foot whaler disappeared in a perfectly soundless manner from its davits. The officer of the watch saw it go and grunted; he was nearly blind from the spray, and aching in every bone from hi& efforts to keep his feet—and—his look-out.

"Tell him," he , roared into the ear of the quarter-master, who was about to call his relief, "that I thiak it is quite

likely it may come on to blow presently;" left to himself once more he crammed sodden tobacuo into his pipe and chuckled hoarsely. Ten minutes later his re'ief appo.irs, and reports that "he has twice been chucked oat of his bunk." In a temporary lull, during which he can make himself heard, he remarks that he has seen it worse in a typhoon off Hongkong, to which the other man replies that it is small potatoes to a Mauritius cyclone. But they agree that it was a pity they sold their respective farms and went to sea!