United States or Turks and Caicos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Our passage to the Duchateau Isles, a distance of less than 400 miles, has been protracted by the prevalence of light winds, although these were generally favourable, or from the westward. Occasional calms, squalls, and rain occurred, but the weather generally was finer than during the South-East monsoon.
I cannot speak from experience of the winds or weather during the month of April, at Swan River, but have been told that the seabreezes are moderate, and the land winds of longer duration; calms are frequent and the weather altogether seems to indicate the breaking up of the summer season; light winds are occasionally felt from the northward, with a dull, gloomy appearance between that point and South-West.
The colonel screwed his head round for a glance at his coachman's back. "Perfectly guaranteed to-day!" he said of Flitch's look of solidity. "The convulsion of the elements appears to sober our friend; he is only dangerous in calms. Five minutes will bring us to the park-gates."
For a week or ten days after crossing the line, we had the usual variety of calms, squalls, head winds, and fair winds, at one time braced sharp upon the wind, with a taut bowline, and in an hour after slipping quietly along, with a light breeze over the taffrail, and studding-sails set out on both sides, until we fell in with the northeast trade-winds; which we did on the afternoon of
I kept up against these as well as I could to the southward, and when we had now and then a flurry of wind at east I still went away due south, purposely to get to the southward as fast as I could; for while near the Line I expected to have but uncertain winds, frequent calms, rains, tornados, etc. which would not only retard my course but endanger sickness also among my men: especially those who were ill provided with clothes, or were too lazy to shift themselves when they were drenched with the rains.
Perhaps, if a man pray for strength to resist temptation, or for guidance in time of perplexity, and if he have faith, his prayer shall avail him something. Why? Not because God will hear, or answer, but for two natural reasons. First, the act of prayer is emotional, and so calms the man who prays, for much of his excitement is worked off. It is so when a sick man groans: it eases his pain.
These men seem living barometers, exquisitely sensitive to all the invisible changes of atmospheric expansion and compression; they are not easily caught in those awful dead calms which suddenly paralyze the wings of a bark, and hold her helpless in their charmed circle, as in a nightmare, until the blackness overtakes her, and the long-sleeping sea leaps up foaming to devour her. "Carajo!"
Drearily and wearily drew on the dark hours of that tempestuous night. Daylight came at last, and only exhibited the scene of wild commotion around; the leaden sky, the dark grey waves broken into strange shapes, leaping and rolling over each other, and covered with masses of white foam. Off that strange African coast, storms and calms succeed each other with but scant warning.
There were thousands of these umbrellas filing slowly by, green, blue, rose, with a vague coloring similar to oil-lights, a Japanese procession seen from above, that on one side was lost in the mystery of the black waters and incessantly reappeared on the other side. The young pilot loved navigation in a sailing ship, the struggle with the wind, the solitude of its calms.
As, however, according to Andrews, she had the power of raising storms, and we had only to complain of calms and baffling winds, I could not see that she had had any influence over us. At last we got so far to the westward that we lost sight of the coast of Norway, but had not made good a mile to the southward we had rather indeed drifted to the northward.
Word Of The Day