Headwind

“ Sail close to the wind, to keep the boat's head near enough to wind as to fill but not shake the sails: to be almost indecent; Second wind, new powers of respiration succeeding to the first breathlessness; Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, to act wrongly and receive a crushing retribution. ”

“ If they are driven thither by a wind from the sea, the wind and the current ruin them; and if they come into it when a land-wind blows, which might seem to favour their getting out again, the height of the mountain stops the wind, and occasions a calm, so that the force of the current runs them ashore, where they are broken to pieces, as ours was; and that which completes the misfortune is that there is no possibility to get to the top of the mountain, or to get out any manner of way. ”

“ Sometimes we sailed as gently and steadily as the clouds overhead, watching the receding shores and the motions of our sail; the play of its pulse so like our own lives, so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labored hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective; now bending to some generous impulse of the breeze, and then fluttering and flapping with a kind of human suspense. It was the scale on which the varying temperature of distant atmospheres was graduated, and it was some attraction for us that the breeze it played with had been out of doors so long. ”

“ I came on deck, after a good night's rest in spite of my poor knee, to find the Ghost foaming along, wing-and-wing, and every sail drawing except the jibs, with a fresh breeze astern. Oh, the wonder of the great trade-wind! All day we sailed, and all night, and the next day, and the next, day after day, the wind always astern and blowing steadily and strong. ”

“ You have begun to fall like a rocket, faster, faster, ever faster, through the black-bordered lane. The wind blinds your eyes, the wind stops your breath, the wind sings in your ears, like an oriflamme stream and strain your tippet-ends, and the snow-crystals spin in your wake. ”

“ As I was a-sayin', the force of the wind was orful. Howsomdever, we had as jolly a little craft as ever cut blue water, and we weathered it bravely. Sometimes, when the wind would sort of sink away a little, we would drive right through the big waves, until even our main-tops were all under water; but, as our hatches were clewed down and our deck was pretty tight, we allers came out of our bath as fresh as ever. Then the gale would start up again, and away we would go over the tops of the waves. ”

“ The Wind would more frequently be perceived to descend and rebound upwards, (Trials of which might be made by holding an Umbrella, extended at right Angles with its Axis, upright in the Hand;) if the same Opportunity offered, of opposing as great a Surface to it in a perpendicular, as is every Day done, in an horizontal Direction: for in walking, the whole Height of the Body, and half its Surface, is opposed horizontally to the Wind: but the Head only, which is covered, is opposed to the perpendicular Pressure. ”

“ In a wind as strong as the one blowing now, you'll notice the plane's tendency to turn into it. That's due to the effect on the tail. It tends to swing like a weathervane until the nose is headed directly toward the point of the compass from which the wind is blowing. Your experience in sailing is going to be a great help. ”

“ The wind was a-surge in these clouds and they visibly careened, and collapsed, and filled out anew as if they were sails spread to the fury of a gale, but no token of motion was in the densely wooded mountains beneath them, and only a gentle breeze ruffled the tree tops of the valleys, a silver wake following its invisible passage. ”

“ The tide of the wind, like the tide of the sea, swirls about, and its cold push at the first causes a lifting feeling in the chest—a gulp and pant—as if it were too keen and strong to be borne. Then the blood meets it, and every fibre and nerve is filled with new vigour. ”

“ That's the main trouble with sailors, Doctor. They don't know winds the way they ought. They can tell a northeast wind from a west wind. And a strong one from a weak one. And that's about all. But when you've spent most of your life, the way we have, flying among the winds, using them to climb on, to swoop on and to hover on, you get to know that there's a lot more to a wind besides its direction and its strength. How often it puffs upward or downward, how often it grows weak or grows strong, will tell you, if you know the science of winds, a whole lot. ”

“ A playful performance on the wind succeeds. Expanding his soft velvet-like plumage, one glides with quivering pinions to the centre of the open space, singing as he flies, then turns with a rapid whirring sound from his wings--somewhat like a child's rattle--and returns to his place again. ”

“ If clouds look as if scratched by a hen
Get ready to reef your topsails then.
Mackerel sky and mare’s tails,
Make lofty ships carry low sails. The shift of the wind is different in the right-hand portion of the depression to what it is in the left-hand portion. In the former, on its first approach, the wind backs to south and falls very light to an almost ominous calm. The first puffs or “paws” of wind give rise to a noise in tree tops without much wind, and little eddies of dust, or to a whistling of the wind indoors, which are all well-known signs of rain. ”

“ In the lake or sea thus formed, every agitation raised by a wind or the immersion of a solid body, propagates itself around in waves that diminish as they widen, and gradually 441become lost to observation in motions communicated to the atmosphere and the matter on the shores. The impulse given by a player to the harp-string, is transformed through its vibrations into aerial pulses; and these, spreading on all sides, and weakening as they spread, soon cease to be perceptible; and finally die away in generating thermal undulations that radiate into space. ”

“ By the spirit of Pan, my pool felt good after the long day's hike!
The wind had changed with the waning afternoon and now blew gently from the southwest, promising a period of fair weather. It gave us, also, the advantage of greater freedom in noises; for, when living in the wild, one comes to realize how potent a carrier, or muffler, of noises is the wind. A fire at night, or smoke by day, may be tempered with human ingenuity, but nature bandies the sound waves with her breath.
I dined in the elegance of simplicity, and Smilax extinguished our small fire of buttonwood. ”

“ Our children once on board, all safe and sound,
Watch with delight the busy scene around.
The noisy steam-pipe blows and blows away,—
"Now this is just the noise we like," they say.
But while the turmoil loud and louder grows,
"I'm glad the wind blows gently," whispers Rose. ”

“ How delightfully fresh it comes to us as we swing, or when we are driving fast, or sailing; and how terrible its force is when the stormy wind rushes past, driving everything before it! It is then we can understand that the gentle air, which yields to the slightest touch, may be a very mighty power indeed. ”

“ Unless the wind freshens a good deal we sha'n't be there for three or four days, but I fancy, from the look of the sky, that it will blow up before morning, and, as likely as not, we shall get more than we want by evening. There is generally a cruiser or two off the mouth of the river. In a light wind we can show them our heels easily enough, but if it is blowing at all their weight tells. ”

“ But Wintry Wind is the most exasperating and prying of nature’s messengers, whose mission is the uncovering of weaknesses in all things animate and inanimate. It soon discovers if your eyes are sensitive, your hat a size too small, that you are subject to rheumatism, that your breath is short when you walk uphill, and that your knees bend as you go down, and so turns your cloak over your head like an extinguisher. ”

“ The surges of wind were mightier than the furious rain drift, and with their strength and their roaring came the majesty of thunder, constant as the wind. Long ago, from where the clouds lay solid on the mountains great booming sounds had come, as if these masses rolling over the summits had struck with muffled crash upon crags below ”

“ To me that round wind which runs before the true day has ever been fortunate and of good omen. It cleared the trouble from my body, and set my soul dancing to 267’s heel and toe across the northerly set of the waves—such waves as I had often watched contemptuously from the deck of a ten-thousand-ton liner. ”

“ So are we impelled by little puffs of wind, when we have once started in the ice-sleigh down the slippery incline hewn out like a steel ribbon, our vision blinded by snow swirls and the rapidity of transit, till with amaze we find ourselves at the bottom with a jerk, not knowing what urged us on the road. ”

“ The wind often owes [Pg 57] something of its life to its sound. The common tendency of children to think of the sea as alive, of which M. Pierre Loti gives an excellent illustration in his Roman d'un enfant, is no doubt based on the perception of its noise and movement. A little boy assured his teacher that the wind was alive, for he heard it whistling in the night. The impulse, too, to endow with life an object which looks so very much of a machine as a railway engine, is probably supported by the knowledge of its puffing and whistling. ”

“ When waves are first formed they are short and steep, but if the wind continues to blow in the same direction across a considerable stretch of sea, their length and height increases, and their crests, on which the wind has the greatest effect, tend to drive faster than the main body of the waves and so break forward in a smother of white foam. ”

“ Vent en pouppe, largue la soute; large wind, large allowance; an expression used by seamen on the commencement of a fair wind, after they had been put to short allowance in consequence of foul winds.
Le Vent en pouppe fait trouver la mer unie, a stern wind brings an easy sea; expressed of a ship when sailing afore the wind, in which situation she will be less strained by the agitation of the sea, than when she lies in the trough or hollow of it, side-ways. ”

“ What had been a gentle ten-miles-an-hour breeze on the river above began resolving itself into a succession of fitful gusts of twenty or thirty as I approached the rock-walled bend. Even a steady head-wind makes steering awkward in going into a rapid; a gusty one is a distinct nuisance. ”

“ If you are far enough out, the breaking wave curves over you like a roof inlaid and prismatic, bending down on the other side of you in layers of chalk and drifts of snow, and the lightning flash of the foam ends in the thunder of the falling wave. ”

“ The sky is clear between the Helm and Bar, because the air below is warmer and can support a greater quantity of vapour rising from the surface of the earth, and this vapour is driven forward by the Helm-Wind, and ascends up in the rebound to the Bar. In short, the Helm is merely a cloud or cap upon the mountain, the cold air descends from the Helm to the valley, and constitutes the Helm Wind, and when warmed and rarified in the valley, ascends and forms the Bar. ”

“ The wind is the rear-guard of the marching files of billows formed as the main wave enters an indentation in the shore. As the wave divides, all the secondary waves pursue the original direction, but the outer ones are retarded, as compared with the middle ones, and seem to fall back. ”

“ Strictly speaking, the changes in the velocity of the wind, varying from three feet per second to two hundred and twenty feet, would explain the variations of the waves rising from three inches in a calm sea to thirty-six feet in a raging one. Strictly speaking, the horizontal direction of the winds, even in a squall, enables us to understand how it is that a wave thirty feet high can be fifteen hundred feet long. ”

“ The windmill stands high and white, a thing of life and radiance and delicate beauty, surrounded by grass, in communion with the heavens. Such noise as it has is elemental, justifiable, like a ship's cordage in a gale. ”

“ A whirlwind creating a vacuum in its centre, the water of the ocean rushes up to fill it, while the cloud above descends to meet the ascending column. It passes over the face of the ocean with a rotary motion, and at times crossing the track of a vessel, tears its sails and spars to pieces. ”

“ When the wind is very faint, put your finger in your mouth, wet it on all sides, and hold it up; the side on which the wind blows will feel cool and tell from what quarter the wind comes: if on the east side of your finger, the wind blows from the east, and so on. Keep testing the direction of the wind as you trail, and if at any time it cools a different side of the finger, you will know that you are not walking in the same direction as when you left camp and must turn until the wet finger tells you [35] which way to go. ”

“ They will thus learn on which side to lay-to a ship in a storm, for, by watching the veering of the wind, they will ascertain the direction in which it is falling; if violent, and the changes sudden, the ship will probably be near the centre of the vortex; whereas, if the wind blows a great length of time from the same point, and the changes are gradual, it may reasonably be supposed the ship is near the extremity of it. ”

“ Sometimes the wind would cause her veil for a few moments to rear straight up above her head in a monstrous black column of woe. Sometimes, if she stopped a moment waiting to cross the street, it would whip round the body of any one who happened to be near, like a cord. ”