LESSON 13 A WILD NIGHT AT SEA

A WILD NIGHT AT SEA

Here, the winds, free from that cramped prison called the Earth, are out upon the waste of waters. Here, roaring, raging, shrieking, howling, all night long!

On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space roll the long heaving billows. Mountains and caves are here, and yet are not: for what is now the one, is now the other; then all is but a boiling heap of rushing water.

IN COMBAT WITH THE ELEMENTS

Pursuit, and flight, and mad return of wave on wave, and savage struggling, ending in a spouting up of foam that whitens the black night; ceaseless change of place, and form, and hue; constancy [1] in nothing but eternal [2] strife [3] !

On, on, on they roll, and darker grows the night, and louder howl the winds, and more clamorous [4] and fierce become the million voices in the sea, when the wild cry goes forth upon the storm, "A ship!"

Onward she comes, in gallant combat with the elements [5] , her tall masts trembling, and her timbers starting on the strain; onward she comes—now high upon the curling billows, now low down in the hollows of the sea— as if hiding for the moment from its fury; and every storm-voice in the air and water cries more loudly yet, "A ship!"

Still she comes striving on: and at her boldness and the spreading cry, the angry waves rise up above each other's hoary heads to look; and round about the vessel, far as the mariners [6] on her decks can pierce into the gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other down, and starting up, and rushing forward from afar, in dreadful curiosity. High over her they break, and round her surge [7] and roar; and, giving place to others, moaningly depart, and dash themselves to fragments in their baffled [8] anger: still she comes onward bravely.

And though the eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her all the night, and dawn of day discovers the untiring train yet bearing down upon the ship in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, with dim lights2 burning in her hull, and people there, asleep; as if no deadly element were peering in at every seam and chink, and no drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable [9] depths below.

—CHARLES DICKENS

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[1] constancy: Absence of change.

[2] eternal: Unending.

[3] strife: Conflict, struggle.

[4] clamorous: Noisy.

[5] elements: Forces of Nature.

[6] mariners: Sailors.

[7] surge: Swell.

[8] baffled: Beaten, disappointed.

[9] unfathomable: Too deep to be measured.