are proportionate to oceanic depths; the day we realize that the globe is a vast loadstone polarized in immensity, with two axes—­an axis of rotation and an axis of effluvium—­intersecting each other at the centre of the earth, and that the magnetic poles turn round the geographical poles; when those who risk life will choose to risk it scientifically; when men shall navigate assured from studied uncertainty; when the captain shall be a meteorologist; when the pilot shall be a chemist; then will many catastrophes be avoided.  The sea is magnetic as much as aquatic:  an ocean of unknown forces floats in the ocean of the waves, or, one might say, on the surface.  Only to behold in the sea a mass of water is not to see it at all:  the sea is an ebb and flow of fluid, as much as a flux and reflux of liquid.  It is, perhaps, complicated by attractions even more than by hurricanes; molecular adhesion, manifested among other phenomena by capillary attraction, although microscopic, takes in ocean its place in the grandeur of immensity; and the wave of effluvium sometimes aids, sometimes counteracts, the wave of the air and the wave of the waters.  He who is ignorant of electric law is ignorant of hydraulic law; for the one intermixes with the other.  It is true there is no study more difficult nor more obscure; it verges on empiricism, just as astronomy verges on astrology; and yet without this study there is no navigation.  Having said this much we will pass on.

One of the most dangerous components of the sea is the snowstorm.  The snowstorm is above all things magnetic.  The pole produces it as it produces the aurora borealis.  It is in the fog of the one as in the light of the other; and in the flake of snow as in the streak of flame effluvium is visible.

Storms are the nervous attacks and delirious frenzies of the sea.  The sea has its ailments.  Tempests may be compared to maladies.  Some are mortal, others not; some may be escaped, others not.  The snowstorm is supposed to be generally mortal.  Jarabija, one of the pilots of Magellan, termed it “a cloud issuing from the devil’s sore side."[2]

The old Spanish navigators called this kind of squall la nevada, when it came with snow; la helada, when it came with hail.  According to them, bats fell from the sky, with the snow.

Snowstorms are characteristic of polar latitudes; nevertheless, at times they glide—­one might almost say tumble—­into our climates; so much ruin is mingled with the chances of the air.

The Matutina, as we have seen, plunged resolutely into the great hazard of the night, a hazard increased by the impending storm.  She had encountered its menace with a sort of tragic audacity; nevertheless, it must be remembered that she had received due warning.

CHAPTER II.

OUR FIRST ROUGH SKETCHES FILLED IN.

While the hooker was in the gulf of Portland, there was but little sea on; the ocean, if gloomy, was almost still, and the sky was yet clear.  The wind took little effect on the vessel; the hooker hugged the cliff as closely as possible; it served as a screen to her.