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Beilby who was a shipowner as well, and had for many years employed a fleet of small vessels in the South Sea Islands trade. The voyage across the Pacific from Valparaiso to Sydney was disappointing calms and light, variable winds being met with for nearly a month; and then between Australia and New Zealand, two weeks of savage westerly gales tried the ship's weatherly qualities to the utmost.
Likewise, in breasting the continuous head-winds which mark some ocean districts, or traversing the calms of others, there would be gain; but for the most part sailing, it was thought, was sufficiently expeditious, decidedly cheaper, and more generally reliable; for steamers "broke down."
The fact is evident from the want of huts upon the banks of the Murray, and the narrowness of the paths along its margin. We experienced the most oppressive heat about this time. Calms generally prevailed, and about 3 p.m. the sun's rays fell upon us with intense effect.
The other captains remonstrated loudly with Magellan against a punishment which was too degrading for a superior officer, and Carthagena in consequence was simply put under arrest, and guarded by one of the captains. To the calms now succeeded rain, tempests, and heavy squalls, which obliged the vessels to lie-to.
Retarded by contrary winds, calms, and the currents, that set to N.W., we were three days in gaining this space; in which time we discovered an elevated land to the south of this; It first appeared in detached hummocks, but we judged it to be connected.
YOU would have loved to shape your course of life over the broad ocean, with its dead calms and howling tempests, its tornadoes, and its billows mountain-high; whereas I should like to trim my little pinnace to a brisk breeze in some inland lake or tranquil bay, where there was just difficulty of navigation sufficient to give interest and to require skill without any sensible degree of danger.
The Endeavour, on the 5th of December, was in the most imminent hazard of being wrecked. At four o'clock in the morning of that day our voyagers weighed, with a light breeze; but it being variable with frequent calms, they made little way.
After the first five hours the trade died away in a dozen or so gasping fans. The calm continued all that night and the next day one of those glaring, glassy calms, when the very thought of opening one's eyes to look at it is sufficient to cause a headache. The second day a man died an Easter Islander, one of the best divers that season in the lagoon.
It experienced calms and fresh storms; but it was hurled against no rock, and was devoured by no shark; and thus it drifted on for a year and a day, sometimes towards the north, sometimes towards the south, just as the current carried it. Beyond this it was its own master, but one may grow tired even of that.
So that in time he came to see in the storms and calms, more than simply bad times and good; and in the clear blue sky and starry dome, in the magical unfoldings of the dawn and the matchless pageants of the sunset, more than mere indications of the weather.