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By noon, however, the heavy cross-sea had abated, and the Excelsior bore west. When she once more rose and fell regularly on the long rhythmical swell of the Pacific, most of the passengers regained the deck. Even Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb ventured from their staterooms, and were conveyed to and installed in some state on a temporary divan of cushions and shawls on the lee side.
"Very fortunate that we were not on shore, or we should have been all burnt into cinders," said Tom; "we are even now nearer than is altogether pleasant." "If we get farther off we shall be in the middle of a cross-sea which will quickly swamp us," observed Green; "I see the crests of the waves dancing about, not many cables' lengths away, with the light from the mountain reflected on them.
A wild wet night in the Channel, the white waves leaping, lashing, and tumbling together in that confusion of troubled waters, which nautical men call a "cross-sea." A dreary, dismal night on Calais sands: faint moonshine struggling through a low driving scud, the harbour-lights quenched and blurred in mist.
A great cross-sea was running and the wind simply shrieked as it tore the tops off the waves and converted the whole seascape into a haze of driving spray. Down into valleys, up to tossing heights, straining until her seams opened, swung our little boat, brave still but labouring heavily. We knew that the wind and set of the sea was driving us ashore, but we could do nothing.
A cross-sea is very dangerous, for the man at the helm never knows where the wave will strike. After a while the wind shifted and was ahead, and now we had to beat against it and we sailed under close reefed sails. The wind seemed ten times stronger than before, for when a ship runs before the wind, the wind is not felt so much, as it goes with the ship.
So situated, we were caught on a lee shore in an eight-point shift of wind at the height of a hurricane that had beaten our souls sick for forty-eight hours. We drifted in upon the land in the chill light of a stormy dawn across a heartless cross-sea mountain high.
Here, in a tumultuous cross-sea, fifty miles off the shore, deceived by the light, shifty airs and the patches of blue sky showing between the rushing clouds, he made all sail and headed west, only to have the masts whipped out as the whistling fury of wind on the opposite side of the vortex caught and jibed the canvas.
Accordingly Barnaby, seeing that it was required of him to quit the place in which he then lay, arose, though with a good deal of effort, and permitted the negro to help him on with his coat, though feeling mightily dizzy and much put about to keep upon his legs his head beating fit to split asunder and the vessel rolling and pitching at a great rate, as though upon a heavy cross-sea.
We reached the northern point of Luzon without mishap, and stood away with a heavy cross-sea for Hong Kong, arriving on January 4th, 1879. "Then Kublai Khan gave the word of command And they all poured into the Central Land."
He could see nothing, however, and was still staring and wondering when the same thing occurred a second time; and Dick now noticed that the wind had suddenly fallen almost calm, also that the surface of the ocean appeared to be strangely agitated, the regular run of the sea out from the south-east having in a moment given place to a most extraordinary and dangerous cross-sea that seemed to be coming from all directions at the same moment, the colliding seas meeting each other with a rush and causing long walls of water to leap into the air to a height of from twenty to thirty feet.
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