Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

hot winds come sometimes from the north, and cold winds from the south;
the day we shall understand that diminutions of temperature 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.