When we consider the illimitable stretches of ocean over which a sailing ship has to work her way by grace and favour of the winds, and the innumerable possibilities, not merely of disaster but of adventure, befalling such a ship on account of the well-known variability of those invisible aids of commerce, it is nothing short of marvellous that there should be so many men afloat who will tell you with perfect truth that they have been sailing for so many years and have never met with an accident of any kind, nay², that they hardly know what bad weather means. To a man who can scarcely cross one ocean without meeting at least a heavy gale³, and who looks for trouble as a necessary adjunct to his profession, this is a strong reason for belief in luck, since he cannot disbelieve that what so many of his co-workers tell him is true.

 

So far, I think Frank’s experiences had been about the average, but he was now to meet with something that some men who go all their lives to sea know nothing of—an East Indian cyclone⁴. These terrific disturbances⁶ of the atmosphere are not peculiar⁷ to the Indian Ocean, but are also met with in the Atlantic and Pacific within[202] the tropics, and are called cyclones⁹, typhoons, or hurricanes, according to their locality. But the word hurricane, like “awful,” “shocking,” “terrible,” &c., has nearly lost its meaning owing to its being improperly¹⁰ applied¹¹ very often by some excited passenger to what is really only a moderate gale, and thence getting into a newspaper. It has become suspect, like the oft-repeated phrase met with in print, “The captain said that in all his experience of —— years he had never known such a storm.” Captains may say that with a definite purpose in view to a

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