Page:The ocean and its wonders.djvu/45

 driving spray in the cabin, one eccentric old gentleman was seen skipping about the deck with unwonted activity—now on the bulwarks, now on the, and anon in the rigging; utterly regardless of the drenching sea and the howling wind, and seeming as though he were a species of human stormy petrel. This was the celebrated Dr. Scoresby; a man who had spent his youth and manhood in the ; who, late in life, entered the Church, and, until the day of his death, took a special delight in directing the attention of sailors to Him whose word stilled the tempest and bade the angry waves be calm. Being an enthusiast in scientific research, Dr. Scoresby was availing himself of the opportunity afforded by this storm to measure the waves! Others have made similar measurements, and the result goes to prove that waves seldom or never rise much more than ten feet above the. The corresponding depression sinks to the same depth, thus giving the entire height of the largest waves an elevation of somewhere between twenty and thirty feet. When it is considered that sometimes the waves of the sea (especially those off the Cape of Good Hope) are so broad that only a few of them occupy the space of a mile, and that they travel at the rate of about forty miles an hour, we may have some slight idea of the grandeur as well as the power of the ocean billows. The forms represented in our illustration are only wavelets on the backs of these monster waves.