Part 29 (1/2)
invoked, anew, the protection of the British lion. A few hours sufficed to transfer the crew and pa.s.sengers of the East-Indiaman to the _Alabama_, and to get on board from her, some spars of which we were in want. It was found, upon measurement, that her main-yard was almost of the precise dimensions of that of the _Alabama_, and as ours had been carried away in the cyclone of the 16th of October, and had only been fished for temporary use, we got down the yard from the _Wales_, and brought it on board.
We treated the ladies--our first prisoners of the s.e.x--with all due consideration, of course; but I was forced to restrict them in the matter of baggage and furniture, for the want of room. I permitted them to bring on board their entire wardrobes, of course, without permitting it to be examined, but was forced to consign to the flames some fancy chairs and other articles of East India workmans.h.i.+p, which they seemed to prize very highly. I dare say they thought hard of it, at the time, though, I doubt not, they have long since forgiven me. Both ladies were gentle. The Consul's wife was an Englishwoman, the daughter of a general in the British army, serving in the _Mauritius_, where her husband had met and married her. She was refined and educated, of course, and her three little daughters were very beautiful children. Mr. George H. Fairchild--for such was her husband's name--though a New-Englander, was, apparently, an unbigoted gentleman, and observed all the gentlemanly proprieties, during his stay on board my s.h.i.+p.
When I was arrested, after the war, by the Administration of President Johnson, in violation of the contract which the Government had made with me, at my surrender, and threatened with a trial, by one of those Military Commissions which have disgraced American civilization, on the trumped-up charge, among others, of cruelty to prisoners, Mr. Fairchild was kind enough to write to me, in prison, and tender himself as a witness in my behalf. In the then state of New England feeling, with all the pa.s.sions, and especially those of malignity, and hate, running riot through the land, it required moral courage to do this; and I take this opportunity of thanking a New England man, for obeying the instincts of a Christian and a gentleman.
It took us some time to despoil the _Wales_ of such of her spars and rigging as we wanted, and it was near nightfall when we applied the torch to her. We had scarcely turned away from the burning prize, when another sail was discovered, in the fading twilight, but the darkness soon shutting her out from view, it was useless to attempt to chase. The _Wales_ was one of the most useful of my captures. She not only served as a sort of s.h.i.+p-yard, in enabling me to repair the damages I had suffered in the Gulf Stream, but I received eight recruits from her, all of whom were fine, able-bodied seamen. My crew now numbered 110 men--120 being my full complement. I bestowed the ladies, with their husbands, upon the ward-room mess, consigning them to the care of my gallant friend, Kell.
Some of the lieutenants were turned out of their state-rooms, for their accommodation, but being carpet knights, as well as knights of the lance, they submitted to the discomfort with becoming grace.
My _menage_ began now to a.s.sume quite a domestic air. I had previously captured another interesting prisoner, who was still on board--not having been released on parole. This prisoner was a charming little canary-bird, which had been brought on board from a whaler, in its neat gilded cage.
Bartelli had the wonderful art, too, of supplying me with flowers--brought from the sh.o.r.e when this was practicable, and when not practicable, raised in his own tiny pots. When I would turn over in my cot, in the morning, for another nap, in that dim consciousness which precedes awakening, I would listen, in dreamy mood, to the sweet notes of the canary, the pattering of the tiny feet of the children and their gleeful voices over my head; inhaling, the while, the scent of the geranium, or the jessamine, and forget all about war's alarms. ”Home, Sweet Home,” with all its charms, would cl.u.s.ter around my imagination, and as my slumber deepened, putting reason to rest, and giving free wing to fancy, I would be clasping again the long-absent dear ones to my heart. Bartelli's shake of my cot, and his announcement that it was ”seven bells”--half-past seven, which was my hour for rising--would often be a rude dispeller of such fancies, whilst the Fairchilds were on board.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII.
THE CALM-BELTS, AND THE TRADE-WINDS--THE ARRIVAL OF THE ALABAMA AT THE ISLAND OF MARTINIQUE--THE CURIOSITY OF THE ISLANDERS TO SEE THE s.h.i.+P--A QUASI MUTINY AMONG THE CREW, AND HOW IT WAS QUELLED.
We captured the _Wales_, as described in the last chapter, on the 8th of November. On the 10th of the same month, we observed in lat.i.tude 25. We were approaching the calm-belt of Cancer. There are three of these calm-belts on the surface of the earth, and the phenomena which they present to the eye of the seaman are very beautiful. A s.h.i.+p coming out of New York, for instance, and bound south, will first encounter the calm-belt which the _Alabama_ is now approaching--that of Cancer. She will lose the wind which has brought her to the ”belt,” and meet with light airs, and calms, accompanied, frequently, by showers of rain. She will probably be several days in pa.s.sing through this region of the ”doldrums,”
as the sailors expressively call it, continually bracing her yards, to catch the ”cats-paws” that come, now from one, and now from another point of the compa.s.s; and making no more than twenty, or thirty miles per day.
As she draws near the southern edge of the belt, she will receive the first light breathings of the north-east trade-wind. These will increase, as she proceeds farther and farther south, and she will, ere long, find herself with bellying canvas, in a settled ”trade.” She will now run with this wind, blowing with wonderful steadiness and regularity, until she begins to near the equator. The wind will now die away again, and the s.h.i.+p will enter the second of these belts--that of equatorial calms. Wending her way slowly and toilsomely through these, as she did through those of Cancer, she will emerge next into the south-east trade-wind, which she will probably find somewhat stronger than the north-east trade. This wind will hurry her forward to the tropic of Capricorn, in the vicinity of which she will find her third and last calm-belt.
These three calm-belts enclose, the reader will have observed, two systems of trade-winds. To understand something of these winds, and the calms which enclose them, a brief reference to the atmospheric machine in which we ”live, and breathe, and have our being” will be necessary. A philosopher of the East has thus glowingly described some of the beauties of this machine: ”It is,” says he, ”a spherical sh.e.l.l, which surrounds our planet, to a depth which is unknown to us, by reason of its growing tenuity, as it is released from the pressure of its own superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s. Its surface cannot be nearer to us than fifty, and can scarcely be more remote than five hundred miles. It surrounds us on all sides, yet we see it not; it presses on us with a load of fifteen pounds on every square inch of surface of our bodies, or from seventy to one hundred tons on us, in all, and yet we do not so much as feel its weight. Softer than the softest down--more impalpable than the finest gossamer--it leaves the cobweb undisturbed, and scarcely stirs the lightest flower that feeds on the dew it supplies; yet it bears the fleets of nations on its wings around the world, and crushes the most refractory substances with its weight. When in motion, its force is sufficient to level the most stately forests, and stable buildings with the earth--to raise the waters of the ocean into ridges like mountains, and dash the strongest s.h.i.+p to pieces like toys.
”It warms and cools, by turns, the earth, and the living creatures that inhabit it. It draws up vapors from the sea and land, retains them dissolved in itself, or suspended in cisterns of clouds, and throws them down again, as rain or dew when they are required. It bends the rays of the sun from their path, to give us the twilight of evening, and of dawn; it disperses, and refracts their various tints, to beautify the approach and the retreat of the orb of day. But for the atmosphere, suns.h.i.+ne would burst on us, and fail us at once, and at once remove us from midnight darkness to the blaze of noon. We should have no twilight to soften, and beautify the landscape; no clouds to shade us from the scorching heat, but the bald earth, as it revolved on its axis, would turn its tanned and weakened front to the full and unmitigated rays of the lord of day.
”It affords the gas which vivifies, and warms our frames, and receives into itself that which has been polluted by use, and thrown off as noxious. It feeds the flame of life, exactly as it does that of the fire.
It is in both cases consumed, and affords the food of consumption,--in both cases it becomes combined with charcoal, which requires it for combustion, and is removed by it, when this is over.”
The first law of nature may be said to be _vis inertiae_, and the atmosphere thus beautifully described, following this law, would be motionless, if there were not causes, outside of itself, to put it in motion. The atmosphere in motion is _wind_, with which the sailor has so much to do, and it behooves him to understand, not only the causes which produce it, but the laws which control it. ”Whence cometh the wind, and whither goeth it?” It comes from heat, and as the sun is the father of heat, he is the father of the winds. Let us suppose the earth, and atmosphere both to be created, but not yet the sun. The atmosphere, being of equal temperature throughout the earth, would be in equilibrium. It could not move in any direction, and there would not be the slightest breeze to fan the brow. Now let us suppose the sun to be called into existence, and to begin to dart forth his rays. If he heated the earth, and the atmosphere in all parts alike, whilst there would be a swelling of the atmosphere into greater bulk, there would still be no motion which we could call wind. But the earth being placed in an elliptical orbit, and made to revolve around the sun, with its axis inclined to the plane in which it revolves, now approaching, and now receding from the sun, and now having the sun in one hemisphere, and now in another, the atmosphere is not only heated differently, in different parts of the earth, but at different seasons of the year; and thus the winds are engendered.
Let us imagine this heating process to be going on for the first time. How we should be astonished? The atmosphere having hitherto had no motion, in our experience, we should have conceived it as immovable as the hills, and would be quite as much astonished to see it putting itself in motion, as to see the hills running away from us. But in what direction is the atmosphere now moving? Evidently from the north, and south poles toward the equator, because we know that the intertropical portions of the earth are more heated, than the extratropical portions.
Thus far, we have not given the earth any diurnal motion around its axis.
Let us give it this motion. It is revolving now from west to east, at the rate of fifteen miles in a minute. If the atmosphere had been perfectly still when this motion was given to the earth, as we have supposed it to have been before the creation of the sun, the consequence would be a breeze directly from the east, blowing with different degrees of strength, as it was nearer to, or further from the equator. For it is obviously the same thing whether the atmosphere stands still, and the earth revolves, or whether the earth stands still, and the atmosphere moves. In either case we have a wind.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
But the atmosphere was not still, when we gave the diurnal motion to the earth. There was already a breeze blowing, as we have seen, from the north, and south poles toward the equator. We have thus generated two winds--a north wind and an east wind. But these two winds cannot blow in the same place at the same time; and the result will be a wind compounded of the two. Thus in the northern hemisphere we shall have a north-east wind, and in the southern hemisphere we shall have a south east-wind.
These are the two trade-winds, enclosed by the three calm-belts which have been described to the reader. The three arrows on the preceding page will ill.u.s.trate the manner in which the north-east trade-wind is formed by the north wind and the east wind, which our theory puts in motion.
Why it is that the trade-winds do not extend all the way from the poles to the equator, but take their rise in about the thirtieth parallel of lat.i.tude, north and south, we do not know. The theory would seem to demand that they should spring up at the poles, and blow continuously to the equator; in which case we should have but two systems of winds covering the entire surface of the earth. This non-conformity of the winds of the extra-tropical regions to our theory, does not destroy it, however, but brings into the meteorological problem other and beautiful features.
Having put the winds in motion, our next business is to follow them, and see what ”circuits” they travel. The quant.i.ty of atmosphere carried to the equator by the north-east and south-east trade-winds, must find its way back whence it came, in some mode or other; otherwise, we should soon have all the atmosphere drawn away from the poles, and piled up at the equator.
We can easily conceive this, if we liken the atmosphere to fleeces of wool, and suppose an invisible hand to be constantly drawing away the fleeces from the poles, and piling them up at the equator. But how to get it back is the difficulty. It cannot go back on the surface of the earth, within the tropics, for there is a constant surface current here toward the equator. There is but one other way, of course, in which it can go back, and that is, as an upper current, running counter to the surface current. We may a.s.sume, indeed, we _must_ a.s.sume, that there are two upper currents of air, setting out from the equator, and travelling, one of them to the 30th degree of north lat.i.tude, and the other to the 30th degree of south lat.i.tude.
What becomes of these two upper currents, when they reach these parallels of lat.i.tude, is not quite so certain; but there is good reason for believing that they now descend, become surface currents, and continue their journey on to the poles. It is further supposed that, when they reach the poles, they ”whirl about” them, ascend, become upper currents again, and start back to the 30th parallel; and that, when they have returned to this parallel, they descend, become a surface current again--in other words, the trade-wind--and proceed to the equator as before.
[Ill.u.s.tration]