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Updated: May 28, 2025
When at length the gale broke and the wind, veering as it fell, gradually worked round until it once more became the trade-wind, blowing out from about due east, the ship had accomplished the record run of her existence up to that date, Dyer's reckoning showing that the craft had averaged twelve knots throughout that mad, desperate race, and that it had swept them to within three hundred and twenty-five miles of their destination.
Our captain, a young man, and a perfect gentleman, never refused any indulgence to the men, compatible with discipline and the safety of the ship: and as the regular trade-wind blew, there was no danger of sudden squalls The ceremony of crossing the line, I am aware, has been often described so has Italy and the Rhine; but there are varieties of ways of doing and relating these things; ours had its singularity, and ended, I am sorry to say, in a deep tragedy, which I shall remember "as long as memory holds her seat."
I went below at eight bells on a Friday morning when we were two months "out" from Sydney, as I very well remember. The ship had then caught the first of the south-east trade-wind. All was well when I left the deck. I was awakened by a hand violently shaking my shoulder. I sprang up and found Robson, the second mate, standing beside my bunk. He was pale as the ghost the Dane had described.
According to Lieutenant Maury, a perpetual upper current prevails from South America to North Africa, the volume being equal to that which flows southward by the north-east trade-wind.
The two keys, lying respectively half a mile and three miles east of the island, and possibly the outer breaker, which is four miles, all might have been connected with each other, and with the island, four hundred years ago. In that event the most convenient place for Columbus to anchor in the strong northeast trade-wind, was where I have put an anchor on the sub-sketch of Samana.
The trade-wind blew steady and true, balmy and warm also; the sky was cloudless, except at morning and evening dusk; and there were for scenery those dazzling expanses of sea and sky, and those gorgeous hues of dawn and sunset, which are only to be found in the happy latitudes.
True, there were one or two drawbacks the heat, for instance, was terrific in that hemmed-in valley where only a transient breathing of the trade-wind penetrated at rare intervals; and the men soon found that paradise still harboured the serpent, for several snakes were seen and one was killed a diabolically handsome but most wicked-looking creature clothed in a skin of greyish black ornamented with a diamond pattern consisting of lattice-like lines of yellow, and having the flat heart-shaped head which betrayed its venomous character.
Moreover, the high land to the eastward so effectually protected the place from the trade-wind that a perpetual calm existed in the cove, even when the trade-wind was piping up with the strength of half a gale a few hundred yards away.
But when the admiral proposed to send the Tisiphone on with it, Captain Saumarez, desirous of remaining at the seat of warlike operations, represented to him that the Tisiphone was a fine fast-sailing ship on a new construction, that in the existing state of affairs she might be useful, and that he should be happy to contribute by his own personal exertions to the promotion of the public service; whereas any vessel could run down with the trade-wind to Jamaica.
The long swell caused by the gentle but steady action of the trade-wind, always blowing in one direction over a wide area, causes breakers, almost equalling in force those during a gale of wind in the temperate regions, and which never cease to rage.
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