The Ocean and Its Wonders, R. M. Ballantyne [best motivational books .txt] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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There were many Chinamen on deck vehemently imploring assistance. The exhibition of their joy on beholding the approach of the stranger was of the wildest and most extravagant nature; but it was doomed to be suddenly turned to despair, as the violence of the storm drove the ship past the wreck. It became necessary to put her on the other tack, a manoeuvre which the poor creatures construed into abandonment, and the air rang with the most agonising shrieks of misery. But hope was again raised, when a boat was lowered and a rope thrown on board for the purpose of towing the junk to the ship. This intention was frustrated by the windlass breaking. At sight of this one man, in a paroxysm of despair, jumped overboard after the rope; but he missed it. Being a good swimmer, he tried to reach the boat; but his feeble power could avail him nothing in the midst of such raging elements: he speedily sank to rise no more.
Another rope, however, was secured to the junk, and by means of it the rest of the crew (eighteen in number) were saved. Their gratitude was boundless. They almost worshipped the officers, the crew, and the vessel, prostrating themselves and kissing the feet of the former, and the very planks of the latter.
Well-built ships, however, are not always able to withstand the violence of rotatory storms. Instances occur in which the tightest built and best manned ships are destroyed as suddenly as the clumsiest of ill-managed junks. Not many years ago, a vessel was proceeding prosperously on her voyage, when signs of a coming tempest induced the wary captain to reduce, and, finally, to take in all sail. But his precautions were in vain. The storm burst on the devoted ship, and in a few minutes the masts went over the side, and the hull lay a total wreck upon the sea.
These hurricanes or cyclones, although in reality whirlwinds, are so large that man’s eye cannot measure them, and it is only by scientific investigation that we have arrived at the knowledge of the fact. The whirlwind, properly so called, is a much smaller body of atmosphere. Sometimes we see miniature whirlwinds, even in our own temperate land, passing along a road in autumn, lifting the leaves and dust into the air and carrying them along in the form of a rotatory pillar. In other regions they exert a power quite equal to the tempest, though in a more limited space, overturning houses, uprooting trees, cutting a track twenty or thirty yards wide through the dense forest as thoroughly as if a thousand woodmen had been at work there for many years.
When whirlwinds pass from the land to the sea they create waterspouts; of which we shall have something to say in another chapter. Meanwhile, we think it may be interesting to give the following miscellaneous information regarding the atmosphere, gathered from the work of Dr Buist, who devoted much earnest study to the subject of atmospheric phenomena.
“The weight of the atmosphere is equal to that of a solid globe of lead sixty miles in diameter. Its principal elements are oxygen and nitrogen gases, with a vast quantity of water suspended in them in the shape of vapour; and, commingled with these, a quantity of carbon in the shape of fixed air, sufficient to restore from its mass many-fold the coal that now exists in the world. Water is not compressible or elastic; it may be solidified into ice or vaporised into steam: but the air is elastic and compressible. It may be condensed to any extent by pressure, or expanded to an infinite degree of tenuity by pressure being removed from it. It is not liable to undergo any changes in constitution beyond these, by any of the ordinary influences by which it is affected.”
If the heating and cooling process—which we have described as being carried on between the equator and the poles—were to cease, we should have a furious hurricane rushing perpetually round the globe at the rate of one thousand miles an hour,—ten times the speed of the most violent tornado that has ever carried devastation over the surface of the earth.
The air, heated and dried as it sweeps over the arid surface of the soil, drinks up by day myriads of tons of moisture from the sea,—so much, indeed, that, were none restored to it, the surface of the ocean would be depressed eight or ten feet annually.
We do not certainly know the height of the atmosphere. It is said that its upper surface cannot lie nearer to us than fifty, and can scarcely be further off than five hundred, miles. “It surrounds us on all sides, yet we cannot see it; it presses on us with a weight of fifteen pounds on every square inch of the surface of our bodies—in other words, we are at all times sustaining a load of between seventy and one hundred tons of it on our persons—yet we do not feel it! Softer than the finest down, more impalpable than the lightest gossamer, it leaves the cobweb undisturbed, and, at times, scarcely stirs the most delicate flower that feeds on the dew it supplies; yet it bears the fleets of nations on its wings round the world, and crushes the most refractory substances with its weight. It bends the rays of the sun from their path to give us the aurora of the morning and the twilight of evening. It disperses and refracts their various tints to beautify the approach and the retreat of the orb of day. But for the atmosphere, sunshine would burst on us in a moment and fail us in the twinkling of an eye, removing us in an instant from midnight darkness to the blaze of noon.”
We have written a good deal on this subject, yet the thousandth part has not been told of even the grand and more obvious operations of the atmosphere, much less the actions and results of its minor and invisible processes. Were we to descend with philosophers into the minuter laboratories of the world, and consider the permeating, ramifying, subtle part the atmosphere plays in the innumerable transformations that are perpetually going on around and within us, we should be constrained to feel more deeply than we have ever yet felt, that the works of the Creator are indeed wonderful beyond all expression or conception.
We turn back now from the atmospheric to the aqueous ocean. Yet so intimate is the connection between the two, that we shall find it impossible to avoid occasional reference to the former.
Our present subject, waterspouts, obliges us to recur for a little to the atmosphere, which we dismissed, or attempted to dismiss, in the last chapter.
There is no doubt that waterspouts are to a great extent, if not altogether, due to the presence of electricity in the air. When the clouds have been raging for some time in the skies of tropical regions, rendering the darkness bright, and the air tremulous with their dread artillery, they seem to grow unusually thirsty; the ordinary means of water-supply through the atmosphere do not appear to be sufficient for the demand, or war-tax in the shape of water-spouts, that is levied on nature. The clouds therefore descend to the sea, and, putting down their dark tongues, lick up the water thirstily in the form of waterspouts.
These whirling pillars of water frequently appear in groups of several at a time. They are of various heights, sometimes ranging up to seven hundred yards, with a thickness of fifty yards, and are very dangerous to ships that happen to come within their influence.
That they are caused by electricity has been proved by experiment—miniature waterspouts have been produced by artificial means; and as Dr Bonzano of New York gives particular directions how the thing ought to be done, we quote his words for the benefit of those who happen to possess electrical machines.
“From the conductor of an electrical machine suspend, by a wire or chain, a small metallic ball (one of wood covered with tinfoil); and under the ball place a rather wide metallic basin, containing some oil of turpentine, at the distance of about three-quarters of an inch. If the handle of the machine be now turned slowly, the liquid in the basin will begin to move in different directions and form whirlpools. As the electricity on the conductor accumulates, the troubled liquid will elevate itself in the centre, and at last become attached to the ball. Draw off the electricity from the conductor, to let the liquid resume its position; a portion of the turpentine remains attached to the ball. Turn the handle again very slowly, and observe now the few drops adhering to the ball assume a conical shape, with the apex downward; while the liquid under it assumes also a conical shape, the apex upward, until both meet. As the liquid does not accumulate on the ball, there must necessarily be as great a current downward as upward, giving the column of liquid a rapid circular motion, which continues until the electricity from the conductor is nearly all discharged silently, or until it is discharged by a spark descending into the liquid. The same phenomena take place with oil or water. Using the latter liquid, the ball must be brought much nearer, or a much greater quantity of electricity is necessary to raise it.
“If, in this experiment, we let the ball swing to and fro, the little waterspout will travel over its immature sea, carrying its whirlpools along with it. When it breaks up, a portion of the liquid—and with it anything it may contain—remains attached to the ball. The fish, seeds, leaves, etcetera, that have fallen to the earth in rain-squalls, may have owed their elevation to the clouds to the same cause that attaches a few drops of the liquid, with its particles of impurities, to the ball.”
There can be no doubt whatever that fish are carried up in waterspouts, because the descent of those creatures from the skies in rain is a well-established fact; and if they did not get there in waterspouts—which, when we consider it, seems most natural—then we are driven to the conclusion that their native region is the sky, which is by no means so natural or so probable. Many travellers have recorded the fact that small fish have descended in rain. In a letter written not long ago by a gentleman in Singapore we have the following account of a shower of fish:—
“We experienced a shock of earthquake here on the 16th February last. Its duration was about two minutes. Although it caused no damage, its undulatory motion was sufficiently strong to affect certain persons with a sensation akin to sea-sickness. It was followed by rain in torrents, on the 20th, 21st, and 22nd. On the latter day especially, we were, for half an hour, surrounded with water to a considerable depth. We could not see three yards before us. When the sun came out again, I saw a number of Malays and Chinese filling their baskets with fish contained in the pools formed by the rain.
“They told me the fish had ‘fallen from heaven,’ and three days later, when the pools were all dried up, there were still many dead fish lying about. As they lay in my court-yard, which is surrounded by a wall, they could not have been brought in by the overflowing of a torrent; indeed, there is none of any
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