Two days out, and the great broad sweep of the Atlantic makes its influence felt upon all who are in any degree susceptible. To the landsman, the steamship seems to have a regular gigantic see-saw motion, very much like that of the toy ships that used to rise and fall on mimic waves, moved by clock-work, on clocks that used to be displayed in the store windows of jewellers and fancy dealers. Now the bows rise with a grand sweep,--now they sink again as the vessel plunges into an advancing wave,--up and down, up and down, and forging ahead to the never-ceasing, tremulous jar of the machinery. In the calmest weather there is always one vast swell, and when wind or storm prevails, it is both grand and terrible.
The great, vast ocean is something so much beyond anything I ever imagined,--the same vast expanse of dark-blue rolling waves as far as the eye can reach,--day after day, day after day,--the great ship a mere speck, an atom in the vast circle of water,--water everywhere. The very wind sounds differently than on land; a cheerful breeze is like the breath of a giant, and a playful wave will send a dozen hogsheads of water over the lofty bulwarks.
But in a stiff breeze, when a great wave strikes like an iron avalanche against the ship, she seems to pause and shudder, as it were, beneath the blow; then, gathering strength from the unceasing throb of the mighty power within, urges her way bravely on, while far as the eye can reach, as the ship sinks in the watery valleys, you see the great black tossing waves, all crested with spray and foam, like a huge squadron of white-plumed giant cavalry. The spray sometimes flies high over the smoke-stack, and a dash of saline drops, coming fiercely into the face, feels like a handful of pebbles. A look around on the vast expanse, and the ship which at the pier seemed so huge, so strong, so unyielding, becomes an atom in comparison,--is tossed, like a mere feather, upon old Ocean's bosom; and one realizes how little is between him and eternity. There seem to be no places that to my mind bring man so sensibly into the presence of Almighty God as in the midst of the ocean during a storm, or amid the grand and lofty peaks of the Alps; all other feelings are swallowed up in the mute acknowledgment of God's majesty and man's insignificance.