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Many a gallant sailing-ship commander has been driven to despair in other days by the friendly levanter failing them just as they were wellnigh through the Gut or had reached the foot of the majestic Rock, when the west wind would assert its power over its feebler adversary, and unless he was in a position to fetch an anchorage behind the Rock or in the bay, their fate was sealed for days, and sometimes weeks, in hard beating to prevent as little ground being lost as possible.
How came it that no aurora of early light, no prelusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had run before this wild levanter of change? Heretofore or now there must have been huge error on their own showing. Heretofore they must have been traitorously below their duty, or now mutinously beyond it.
The winter of 1799-1800 was one of the most severe ever known to Europeans. The Norwegian sea was frozen in all the fiords, where, as a usual thing, the violence of the surf kept the ice from forming. A wind, whose effects were like those of the Spanish levanter, swept the ice of the Strom-fiord, driving the snow to the upper end of the gulf.
When we were nearing Alexandria, we had a bit of a `Levanter, which delayed our progress for half a day, during which time we had to slow down our engines and keep under easy steam, head to sea; but, after that, the weather was as fine as we could wish, and we got through the Canal without a hitch, not a single vessel blocking us, even after passing the Bitter Lakes, a very unusual thing at this period of the year, when the China clippers crowd the narrow waterway and cause repeated stoppages as a rule to ships outward bound.
So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor'-Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter and Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake.
This not being our case, we somehow or other tumbled down the Mediterranean before a strong Levanter, and then had to work back again along the coast of Spain and France. It is an ill wind, they say, that blows nobody good; and we found it so with us; for off Toulon, in company with the fleet, if we did take prizes they became of little value, because there were so many to share them.
A gentle levanter was wafting them through the Archipelago. When they got abreast of the north end of Zea Island they observed a brigantine coming romping up to them under a cloud of sail. In light winds the Boadicea did not sail fast.
As a mariner of the coast, in mistral or sirocco, levanter or zephyr, few can claim more practice; and for knowing an acquaintance in a carnival, I believe the father of evil himself could not be so disguised that eye of mine should not see his foot! For anticipating a gale, or looking behind a mask, Signor Roderigo, I know not my own equal among men of small learning."
Whilst scudding along in this manner, we passed close under the stern of a large vessel bearing American colours; she was tacking up the straits, and slowly winning her way against the impetuous Levanter.
You can remember how it was in the winter months before Toulon, Stone, when we had neither firing, wine, beef, pork, nor flour aboard the ships, nor a spare piece of rope, canvas, or twine. We braced the old hulks with our spare cables, and God knows there was never a Levanter that I did not expect it to send us to the bottom. But we held our grip all the same.
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