Chapter 21

"--I am gone, Sir
And, anon, Sir,
I'll be with you again."

Clown in Twelfth Night.

Although it is contrary to the apparent evidence of our senses, there is
no truth more certain than that the course of most gales of wind comes
from the leeward. The effects of a tempest shall be felt, for hours, at a
point that is seemingly near its termination, before they are witnessed at
another, that appears to be nearer its source. Experience has also shown
that a storm is more destructive, at or near its place of actual
commencement, than at that whence it may seem to come. The easterly gales
that so often visit the coasts of the republic, commit their ravages in
the bays of Pennsylvania and Virginia, or along the sounds of the
Carolinas, hours before their existence is known in the states further
east; and the same wind, which is a tempest at Hatteras, becomes softened
to a breeze, near the Penobscot. There is, however, little mystery in this
apparent phenomenon. The vacuum which has been created in the air, and
which is the origin of all winds, must be filled first from the nearest
stores of the atmosphere; and as each region contributes to produce the
equilibrium, it must, in return, receive other supplies from those which
lie beyond. Were a given quantity of water to be suddenly abstracted from
the sea, the empty space would be replenished by a torrent from the
nearest surrounding fluid, whose level would be restored, in succession,
by supplies that were less and less violently contributed. Were the
abstraction made on a shoal, or near the land, the flow would be greatest
from that quarter where the fluid had the greatest force, and with it
would consequently come the current.

But while there is so close an affinity between the two fluids, the
workings of the viewless winds are, in their nature, much less subject to
the powers of human comprehension than those of the sister element. The
latter are frequently subject to the direct and manifest influence of the
former, while the effects produced by the ocean on the air are hid from
our knowledge by the subtle character of the agency. Vague and erratic
currents, it is true, are met in the waters of the ocean; but their origin
is easily referred to the action of the winds, while we often remain in
uncertainty as to the immediate causes which give birth to the breezes
themselves. Thus the mariner, even while the victim of the irresistible
waves, studies the heavens as the known source from whence the danger
comes; and while he struggles fearfully, amid the strife of the elements,
to preserve the balance of the delicate and fearful machine he governs, he
well knows that the one which presents the most visible, and to a landsman
much the most