STORM PICTURES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 85, 1 July 1927, Page 3

STORM PICTURES

: the mighty ocean. ; ITS STORM AND CALM, BEAUTY AND LONELINESS.

The deep sea is like the groundwork, the base, as it were, uf some titanic carpet, says a writer in the “Cape Times.'* Over and under its immaculate level is woven the pattern of incidents and happenings, of men and things, that make of the solemnity of the waste spaces the glory of the seas. The sun rises in the mornings, and sets in the evenings, and nothing breaks the emptiness of “even the floor of the gods, level around us.” And yet somehow there is no loneliness and no monotony; the sea is very full of little things, little thumb-nail sketches of life and death and beauty and wonder and terror, little things that weave together into the most glprious pattern in the world. Second Dog Watch For instance. The other night the sun sank in a flaming battle piece that set the wide ocean alight with the bold glory of its majesty. I was standing the second dog watch, and the weather. which had been threatening all day, broke for a moment to do honour to the dying monarch. Ahead of us a vast purple grey bank of clouds, deep as the void between the stars and solid as the high hill, reared a gigantic wall against the west. Across its face, whipped by the screaming wind, a regiment, a host, marched on to battle beneath the curve of the world. And following the footmen of the heavenly host, came reared on her rampant charger her helm flametipped with the light of s/unset, her cloak whipped over her crouched shouders, Brunhild herself storming to Ragnarok and the dusk of the gods. Above her and over the heads of the Valkyrie that swept behind the sun made vast play through the heavens with splashes of crimson and gold, of flaming ruby and the savage lights »f fire opal. A little smother of cloud above him. he turned into a roaring, yawning furnace mouth. A wisp of feathery vapour to his right became plume of a dying Phoenix. Arrowfipped slivers of silver became the flaming lance-heads of the storm. Cessation From Strife For a moment all about him the couds broke away, and his unbelievable glory shone down upon the deep sea. turning the spume above the seas t( J a veil of fine gold, and the crests of the rollers to the roaring beards of thunderbolts. Then the clouds barred him again he sank sullenly and with a dozen last despairing rallies into the purple the underbank. The gold whipped JP; *he the orange and sulphur away from the heavens, and over -ne wide face of the waters there came fk sudden cessation from strife, from the strife of warring lights. . . . And still the sea roared and the wind play through the rigging, and the whipped over our bows. But the Story had departed. Dangerous to Shipping That is one of the many pictures; ne re is another: , 0n a night when the anxious wire--8 crackled with warnings of a sea onerous to shipping,” we came iin rounc * from the coast. Blind t jL n tile deep sea with the darkness of e storm, lost to the land, and under ® wide trailing skirts of Mother Storm herself. 6 lonff swell caught us on the linn tJ PP e d the rocking gunwales '^. lle w ell-decks showed a white tßer *n the black of the sea, with BWart silhouettes of the derricks stri u* Re winch tops standing like Anrt+u 11 trnnks in a waste of snow. M. a water roared all the while like roar of a hundred falls. aRd a & ai n a steep swirl of sea crelrt ca tch us amidships, and the deok Would climb in on our bridge a nd soak the lower bridge with a toe * broken spume. The sting of thp knd-whipped spray crashed over tho h a nd rattled against But i? dger with the lash of driven hail. d an 11 Wa s the head sea that made for ser. xhe head sea that came over l)h»ni and marched down on our avpn , OWs like the vanguard of an * Ve nging army. On A Mighty Roller on the crest of a mighty rolUie « Would swing drunkenwise down sea. na J? k and dive head into a steep file nr Roar ing like the unleashed wind a * er would crash over the fo’c’sie Uie , and leaping and flailing around and the ventilator cowls cluttere d the little deck, would i, crashing aft as she litfed her th* A k' 0 racing clouds again. Over ; n 6 break of the fo’c’sie it would pour huh Niagara of broken water \ Vo , on number one hatch lh p a sweep aft to join the turmoil of r\, Water that had come in overside, this*? aad over again she would do t i o .‘ an Sing her nose cockily into the after every sea, and pounding

away at the smaller seas in between whiles. The sheer of her bows would catch whole dollops of water and fling them hissing into the empty air, to tall back on the bridge and rattle on the wheelhouse windows. Twice during the night she was slowed down. Bead slow as the dawn broke, she was still taking them over the bows, still thundering down on the hatch top, a dirty night. , , . The rain had come upon us suddenly out of the north-east, and the hiss of it over the water was as the sound of the wind in a mighty forest. It was close on eight bells in the first watch, and I prayed for the relief to come quickly, for despite seaboots and oilskins the driving rain hud found me out, and I was very wet. From the shade bracket of our after-mast headlight the rain splashed into the air again and whipped off down wind in a glory of pale gold, the wisps of it flung out against the blackness of the bellying clouds above like a woman s wind-blown hair. . . Below it, as it appeared in my line of vision, the black funnel smoke whipped out even the ghostly echo of light from the mast head, and hurtled away to windward like the clouds above it. A Will O’ The Whisp Suddenly, apparently out of the grime of the smoke, there came a driven dancing will o’ the wisp. A lambent, licking flame, it seemed at first, or rather the pale ghost of a Swaying and swooping against the wind it came towards the light, slowly, and as it semeed with the weariness of the ages upon it. . . Then it came almost up to the R&ht —a lone, lost, storm-battered gull. At the light it banked suddenly as if starkly afraid, and turning, fled pitifully down the empty aisles of the "‘They say that the gulls are the ghosts of seamen drowned at sea. Here was a very ghost, unsubstantial in its approach, ethereal in its flight. Some lost soul seeking again, for a tiny moment, the comfort ot manmade things, the charity of the solid mass of the ship. For one scant instant snatched piteously out of the vast immeasurable abyss of time. A Last Picture We were looking for the south-east trades- they were very slow in coming East to north and north-west the wfnds ?an free over the seatops, but never a breath from the south. o n it went for many days, till we be-an to tell the skipper that the sou - bcs . i m d ~iven up blowing since the‘ safung gone from the fa Then one evening in the first watch I saw a great bank of clouds rearing a t Te St no a r?h d ke'pU™ £t,nd "fs/and the little crested seas ran dou n t "Tt the north wind suddenlv ceased to breathe and a calm spread for a scant minute or so in the sDaces of the night skj. Then suddenly the north wind came on with a puff, hauled round right on to our bows, failed for a moment and swung round to the south-we t. A dw-ridp of rain came with it out ui the belly of the cloud, and a moment later the Heavens were shut from our Sght as the cloud swallowed up the wide-flung lamps of the umverse A playful spurt of water lost o our port bow, was caught by the ' and bent back o\ er the deck. A little sea smacked against our beam. Ihe . ' .i, East Trades w*ere upon us. S As the watch progressed the wind ,ame round o*S our quarter. I handed over the true South Trade wind to my sueThereafter I went below