134 



THE OPAL SEA 



The plunge 

 forward of 

 the ocean 

 liner. 



Not SO with the ocean liner — the craft that sad 

 sea-dogs tell us is only a floating hotel where we 

 see the calm ocean from cabin windows. A 

 great steamer going twenty knots an hour to 

 the west, meeting a gale traveling sixty miles 

 an hour to the east, will furnish forth more 

 dashing waves in an hour than any ship, bark, 

 or schooner ever encountered in a lifetime. 

 The force of that sharp-nosed craft driven 

 headlong against the seas simply shatters the 

 water into dust, flings it up and over bow and 

 bridge and sometimes smokestacks, whirls it 

 aft over funnels and cabins with a blizzard 

 velocity. The plunge of the bow into the 

 smother of the sea, the heave-up with running 

 decks, the clouds of driving spray with their 

 long-drawn hiss-ss-sss along the whole ship's 

 length, make up about as wild a sight as one 

 ever witnesses upon the open ocean. 



And yet fiercer still seems the blow of the 

 wave struck upon the rocks of the shore, and 

 wilder far is the storm seen from some point 

 of pines along the New England coast when a 

 great gale is blowing. Such a storm usually 

 anticipates itself with various warnings. Some- 

 times the waves arrive before the wind, having 

 outrun the storm that created them; but usu- 

 ally the sea is still, flat, apparently hushed. 



The great 

 storm on 

 the coast. 



