HOMEWARD BOUND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15056, 27 July 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

HOMEWARD BOUND.

BY ABBACIES.:

Is waa Orpheus, wo are told<_ gave young hearts to old mountains; but mountains seldom change while in© sea inconstant ever always needs a young heart. When Cap.j Maria and the boldest headlands of the North became as cloudbanks and disappeared, and a few belated seabirds home-ward-bound in the gloaming gave their greetings as they flew, our good ship, freighted with expectant voyagers, passed into the vast storm-swept ocean that stretches without a break from New Zea- ■ land to Capo Horn. The night was fine, one by one the stars came out and flickered ,in turn along the moving line of the hurricane deck. The waves broke under our starboard quarter, and curled in : phosphorescent whorls along the ship's dark sides. They paid tribute of feathery spray when we sank into the heaving hollows. There is a soothing mystery in the spell of the sea on such a night, and an aw 6 inspired of its vastness. The sea was everywhere around. The sea seemed limitless on either beam, and so far aS human eyes could pierce there was only the- sea behind. No waste of; water is the deep blue sea, but a mighty empire, governed by impartial laws, in which every movement is the resultant of many forces; an empire everywhere continuous from our own mis-named Pacific to the deep and clear fiords of from the Atlantic to the sandy shallows of Gombroon, and beyond its " beachy girdle' in the estuaries of mighty rivers, the Mississippi, the Amazon, ths St. /'Lawrence, the tidal fringes reach the kingdoms of the Naiads, where the streams join the rivers and the rivers meet the sea. /

Old and young, rich and poor, English, Scotch, \ Irish, Australians, and; New ; Zealanders were gathered together, who told one another-that they were homeward bound, for the East wind bore softly the call of the Motherland. Hour after hour we sat on deck,, for there ia no time for musing like a starlight night at. sea, The past and the future seem to meet, farowells are mingled with memories of old times, and with new hopes in the near future. Those who have never: travelled feel the enchantment of distant pastures, and hope effaces thei sorrow at parting. Some lounged idly to and fro, some leaned upon the taffrail to gaze into the depths above for the ' stars they knew at home, or lost in reverie, they saw them fitfully refracted in the depths below. On. board a modern liner, homeward bound, one reads Ruskin's condemnation of the love of; change with qualified approval./ Is it truei that " the Weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men most love' change," and that " they wonder most at things new, and digest worst things old." Surely not. Possibly there are lessons in his street that the rover neverreads, but his perceptions are quickened by inspiring changes of scene. His parish, fetters are loosed as he sails into a vast empire where .there are no village theologies. He is lifted above the drab levels of town and country life. Ocean-borne from land to land he feels the pulse of a living world, a different world from the little world at home, in which his spirit was ruled;by; convention and , snugly tucked away. When surrounded by the open sea we gaze (into the cold blue; depths spread every- ! whore from star to star,, the whole scope of life gains vastly in immensity, and we feel that the affairs of the universe hsive a solid background.

On the promenade deck and in the shelter of a long white deckhouse, tKe-decfc chairs were gathered; on both sides in fine weather, and on the lee side only during the stormy days of the roaring forties, when the nights were dark and the sky | was • full of the anger of the sou'-west wind. On such nights it is an inspiration, "to stand securely by a stanchion near the foremost rail of the hurricane deck, and to gaze through half-opened eyelids, hand- | sheltered, at the blacky wind-swept Waves fitfully dappled through riven clouds by | pale reluctant moonlight, and to see the | white spume scud before the gale. Under | the hurricane deck, where the chairs are j I gathered and -read books lie strewn, J and loungers read and chat, is the capitol I of our floating city. In its shelter we scan i the lives of the homeward-bound, and talk of every conceivable subject, from agnosI ticism to the fate of nations, and of socialism, many headed and militant, with hands —so history tells us—that I were always heavy, and always red. Our daughters of Eve made this shelter the lounge of ; their ! social lives, and even at sea were alert to ! the dernier-cri. of fashion. Here was a ! I field of the cloth of clique, and here in the summer evening, the summer wo chased and caught; Dam© Bimmur, many tongued, " making the wind her post horse," made imagination her playfellow; and we knew that Shak&gpere was right. •* aumonr is a pipe blown by surmises." After a long voyage, there is joy for the landsman in the cry of " land." The air was crisp, the*sky was clear, when keen eyes traced the outlines of Diego Ramirez through the grey mists of the morning; rugged and cliff-bound as becomes the home of the stormy petrel andthe grey tern. A highway ot romance and adventure is'this storm-swept highway round the Horn. Scenes of the past . are pictured in the air. and shadows gain the reality of life. They come at will, the square-sterned galleons of Cadiz and Barcelona. They were about the size of a largo coal ketch, they ' navigated these seas—-think of it—without compass or chronometers. For.nations there is a sim- ; pie sequence, climate, history, and character. The oaks out of which the Spanish galleons were fashioned were grown 01 the Pyrenees, the stout hearts- who manned them were fostered hear its snows. They were led by the heroes of the old Boaanaa days; the brave men who built the worldwide Empire of Spain. Whore is that Empire now ? . The romance disappears, the vision vanishes, and we turn in our answer soberly from,: what might .have been, to what is. The history of Spain is a mediaeval romance;, but running through ib there is a weird symphony 5n black, and for the rest—the drama is over, the actors are gone, and the lights are out. The love.of country is. innate in every man, and like an echo of the homeland comes the greeting of oar flag upon tho seas. So we all felt when the Aurora, square rigged on four taunt masts, flew gracefully into the - wind. Her jib and the weather leash of her fore-sail fluttered in the wind, while from her peak flew the old Union Jack, and from her main the signal which told us that she was bound with coal from Cardiff to Callao. : The sunsets of the equatorial belt are a lasting memory in yellow orange and red. Nature revels at the far end of her spectroscope. The sun, .grown large and mis-shapen, sinks in a halo of copper, and casts upon the deck a lurid light, in colour like the flame of a driftwood fire. It ia an eerie, lonesome time, brightened by the thought that the sun will soon be shining where we wish to be. At last the white cliffs of old England are in view. To those who call her home, her long coastline is reminiscent, not of nature only, but of ourselves ; what we see, v suggests what ia hidden. The tree-tops crowd together ins leafy June, dappling each, woodland path, and the shadows rest 'peacefully on the lee. Beyond are grassy doones, a magician's wand, and the whole is in tune with the spirit of Guy of Gisborne: When sha-ws -beena sheen© and ahradde fall fayre,' And leaves both large and long©, It is merr.ro walktosr to , the . ferae forrest, &Vo hear the oroaU hinta sffiwv ' '-■'■'■• *