806 STORMY PETREL.
of a summer's day! and what must it be in the 'wild midnight' of
the end of the year, when the short-lived glories of the arctic solstice,
that have only gleamed 'too soon to fleet,' have withered and waned
into the long and dreary night of the winter of winters? It is indeed
in itself the same by day and by night, and yet how great the difference.
The 'Northern Lights1 themselves arc hidden behind a black starless
sky, and cutting winds that freeze the life-blood sweep over the wilderness
of waters, as if the very Furies were let slip, whirling along the
driving snow, or thick showers of heavy rain, whose drops, mixed with
spray, sleet, and hail, seem part of the squads themselves; you hear
—even if you are not there you hear—the loud shrieks of each gust
of wind, and arc aware of every coming blast. Whither is the stray
bird, to wing its way.' Whither is it to 'flee away and be at rest?'
Where is it now gone? Where is it next to be seen?
Change the scene, and in the low latitudes how impressive the stillness
of the glorious main! 'how dreadful is this place!' What must
it, too, be when there is none there on the bosom of the great deep
to hear the sounds that in (urn are there to be heard, and see the
sights that are there to be seen? Now the Petrel follows in the wake
of some gallant ship sailing on in mistaken security, and on a sudden
a white squall sweeps across her course, and in an instant she is upset,
founders, and goes down among the gurgling waves. She is gone, but
it may be not to the bottom, for there is below the lowest deep that
can be reached by the art of man a lower and deeper still, and a
fathomless abyss which the plummet has never sounded, whether it be
that its depth is so profound, or whether that there is far down below
a current so strong that nothing can sink through it, but must be
whirled adown this true and potent 'Gulf Stream,' hurried on and on
without ever turning aside. How is the ship borne along this ' R a c e ? '
Is she dashed to pieces by the terrific eddies of some 'Maelstrom?'
and, if so, where, how, and when, if ever, will her shattered fragments
re-appear? or does she, right-'d again, glide on once more, the seaman's
'death ship,' with masts standing and sails set, and perform, year after
year, in some ' u n d e r current,' her 'voyage round the world?' Where
is the 'Return of the Admiral' to be welcomed again? There stands
the captain on his quarter-deck, as befits the captain even of a ' Demon
Frigate,' and there are his crew, 'those for whom the place was kept
at board and hearth so long,' 'loved and lost' but still expected perhaps
bv those at home, looking out in death with glazed eyes, now on the
valleys, and now on the hills and mountains that bound the scene on
either side, now on the ' d a r k uufathomed caves' that He hid in the
solitudes of the ocean bed, and now on the coral banks that rise far
above to the surface. Now they overtake or now are overtaken by
some other 'Phantom Ship,' a terror neither of them to the other;
now overhead pass and re-pass the vessels of (he naval nation-- of the
world, the uoble man-of-war, the stately merchantman, the swift and
the slow, squadrons and convoys, the pursuers and the pursued, the
'Homeward' and the 'Outward-bound:' nothing do they reck or wot
of any of them, nor ever will again in this life.—"The wind passeth
over it and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.'
Still the Petrel, who once followed in their wake, flits and flies on
with untired wing. The sudden gust that crossed the path has gone
as suddenly as it came—the storm-cloud is dispersed—all is once
again as quiet as it was before, and no more trace remains of its
progress than the summer ripple leaves on the placid surface of a
sheltered inland lake, when the gentle breeze that had stirred it for
a moment has died away. * Now the little bird flickers forward in the
calm stillness of the tropics, and under the flaming sun of the south,
which seems to have, as it were, molten the sea. itself into a silver
mirror, or, as yon might fancy, of glass, were it not for the rising
from it every here and there of the flying-fish, and tin; dash upon it
of the restless Sea-mew. One while a perfect calm broods over the
whole; at another, light baffling winds, gently laden with the rich
perfume of the laud, arise to mock the sailor with hope of the 'haven
where he would be,' hope to be broken again and again. Now the
sun sets, and the whole western horizon is glorious with his departing
rays; now he rises, a ball of fire, from the east, and runs anew his
daily course. Put, once more, even the long day of the tropics wanes
on to its end, the eventide sky takes new and changiug tints, and
then, at the hour of sundown, the 'Great Light' of the earth sinks
majestically into his gorgeous couch, while the whole of the wide
expanse glows with soft hues, hues from which the rainbow and the
pearl borrow their beauty, and gradually all subsides into calm repose,
the sublimity of the scene to be soon enhanced by the mild radiance
of the benign starlight and the splendour of the 'Southern Cross,' and
after heaving in long sluggish swells, the ocean is again left to sleep
in its cool and quiet rest.
How great the contrast between the unutterable dreariness of a
northern winter and the blaze of glory of the 'Sunny South!' Rut
on again, driven backwards and forwards, from one to the other the
lone and wandering sea-bird travels, and now as it were borne on the
wings of the tempest, the gentle breeze of the hot climate turned into
the icy hurricane of the north, that takes the place of the typhoon or
to rnado of the low latitudes, the Stormy Petrel, whose name betokens