66 THE CALL OF THE SEA 



half an hour." F'ew indeed are the men, however 

 rough and unthinking, that are not quieted and 

 impressed by the marvel of a perfect calm. But 

 the tension is too great to be borne long with 

 patience. Men feel that this majestic environ- 

 ment is too redolent of the coming paradise to be 

 supportable by flesh and blood. They long with in- 

 tense desire for a breeze, for motion, for a change 

 of any sort. So much so that long-continued calm 

 is dreaded by seamen more than any other phase 

 of sea-experience. And yet it is for a time lovely 

 beyond description, soothing the jarring nerves 

 and solemnizing every faculty as if one were to be 

 shut in before the Shekinah in the Holy of Holies. 



It is like the Peace of God. 



F. T. Bullen. 



Calm off the Horn ^cy --o ^i^ 



(From A Tarpaulin Muster) 



/^FF Cape Horn there are but two kinds of 

 ^-"^ weather, neither one of them a pleasant kind. 

 If you get the fine kind, it is dead calm, without 

 enough wind to lift the wind vane. The sea lies 

 oily and horrible, heaving in slow, solemn swells, 

 the colour of soup. The sky closes down upon 

 the sea all round you, the same colour as the 

 water. The sun never shines over those seas, 

 though sometimes there is a red flush, in the east 



