Whether expressed or implied, there is certainly a deep-rooted idea in the minds of shore-dwellers that the vast fenceless fields of ocean are in these latter days well, not to say thickly, populated by ships; that, sail or steam whither you will, you cannot get away from the white glint of a sailing ship or the black along the clean sky of a steamship’s smoke. There is every excuse for such an attitude of mind on the part of landward folk. Having no standard of comparison against which to range the vast lonely breadths of water which make up the universal highway, and being impressed by the statistics of owned by nations, they can hardly be blamed for supposing that the privacy of the sea is a thing of the past. One voyage in a sailing ship to the Australasian Colonies or to India, if the opportunities it afforded were rightly used, would do far more to convince them of the wrong notion possessing them than any quantity of writing upon the subject could effect. But unhappily, few people to-day have the leisure or the to spend voluntarily three months upon a sea passage that can be performed in little more than one. Even those, who by reason of poverty or for their health’s sake do take such[285] passages, almost invariably show signs of utter weariness and . As day after day passes, and the beautiful in which they live gently and forward, their grows until in some it almost amounts to a disease. This condition of mind is not , to say the least, to a calm study of the characteristic features of ocean itself. Few indeed are the passengers, and fewer still are the sailors who will for the delight of the thing spend hour after hour perched upon some commanding point in wide-eyed, sight-strengthening gaze out upon the face of the sea.  
Upon those who do there grows a sense of the most complete privacy, a solemn belonging to the seas. The infrequent , gentle though her progress may be through the calm waters of the tropics, still strikes them as an intruder upon this realm of silence and loneliness. The voices of the crew grate harshly upon the ear as with a sense of such as one feels upon hearing loud conversation in the sacred peace of some huge cathedral. And when a vessel heaves in sight, a tiny mark against the skyline, she but the loneliness, as it were—affords a point from which the eye can faintly calculate the immensity of her surroundings.
 
Quite differently, yet with its own privacy, do the stormy regions of the ocean impress the . In the fine zones the wind’s presence is suggested rather than felt, so quiet and are its . Its voice is hushed[286] into a undistinguishable from the musical of the wavelets into which it the shining sea-surface. But when beyond those regions of perpetual summer the great giant Boreas asserts himself and challenges his ancient colleague and competitor to a of the eternal conflict for , there is an overwhelming sense of duality which is absent in calmer seas. As the furious tempest rages unappeasable, and the solemn ocean wakes in , men must feel that to be present at such a quarrel is to be like some mortal in full Sanhedrim of the High Gods. Apart altogether from the danger of annihilation, there is that sense of intrusion which is almost sacrilege, of daring thus to witness what should surely be hidden from the eyes of the sons of men. All thoughtful minds are thus impressed by the combat of and sea, although their impressions are for the most part so and shadowy that any definite fixing thereof is hopeless. Especially is this form of the solemn privacy of the sea noticeable in the Southern Ocean. Along the line, untraced by mortal hand except upon a Mercator’s Chart, favoured by the swift sailing ships between South America and Australasia, the vastest stretch of ocean known is dotted only at enormous by the fleets of . Day succeeds day, into weeks, during which the brave intruder is upon her headlong way at the rate of eight or nine degrees of in the twenty-four hours[287] without a companion, with no visible environment but sea and sky. And do what the intelligent will, he cannot himself of the notion, when drawing near the confines of New Zealand, seeing how minute that beautiful cluster of islands appears upon the chart, that it would be so easy to miss them altogether, to rush past them under compulsion of the mighty west wind, and waste long painful days struggling against its power to get back again to the overrun port.
 
Once in the writer’s own experience an incident occurred that seemed almost to such a fear. Only sixty days had elapsed since leaving Plymouth with four hundred on board, and during the last fortnight the west wind had blown with terrific violence (to a landsman). But the master, in calmest satisfaction, with fullest confidence in the power of his ship, had refused to shorten sail. He seldom left the deck, the spectacle of his beautiful command in her maddened rush to the east being to him sufficient recompense for loss of rest. At last we flew............