VOYAGE TO ALGERIA 155 



wheel. High moral lessons might be gained on ship- 

 board, by observing what steadfast adherence to an object 

 can accomplish, and what large effects are heaped up by 

 the addition of infinitesimals. The tiller-rope, as the 

 blue- jackets strained in concert, seemed hardly to move; 

 still it did move a little, until finally, by timing the pull 

 to the lurching of the ship, the mastery of the rudder 

 was obtained. I had previously gone on deck. Round 

 the saloon-door were a few members of the eclipse party, 

 who seemed in no mood for scientific observation. Nor 

 did I ; but I wished to see the storm. I climbed the steps 

 to the poop, exchanged a word with Captain Toynbee, 

 the only member of the party to be seen on the poop, 

 and by his direction made toward a cleat not far from 

 the wheel. 1 Round it I coiled my arms. With the ex- 

 ception of the men at the wheel, who stood as silent as 

 corpses, I was alone. 



I had seen grandeur elsewhere, but this was a new 

 form of grandeur to me. The "Urgent" is long and nar- 

 row, and during our expedition she lacked the steadying 

 influence of sufficient ballast. She was for a time prac- 

 tically rudderless, and lay in the trough of the sea. I 

 could see the long ridges, with some hundreds of feet be- 

 tween their crests, rolling upon the ship perfectly parallel 

 to her sides. As they approached, they so grew upon the 

 eye as to render the expression "mountains high" intel- 

 ligible. At all events, there was no mistaking their me- 

 chanical might, as they took the ship upon their shoulders 

 and swung her like a pendulum. The deck sloped some- 

 times at an angle which I estimated at over forty-five de- 



1 The cleat is a T-shaped mass of metal employed for the fastening of ropes. 



