The surface of the North Pacific in the seventh month was strewn with brilliant sunlight, with violent storms rarely seen, like a boundless sea of sun. The summer high-pressure system centered on Hawaii was turning clockwise high in the sky, whipping up ceaseless gales over the ocean and flinging the sea's moist vapor toward the continent without end.
The great wind howled and shifted, blowing all the way from south to north. And an ancient-styled Zheyang Ship, three elongated fore-and-aft sails billowing, was traveling along the basin-rack of the Aleutian Islands, west to east. From time to time, waves three or four meters high slapped in from both sides of the hull, setting the vessel swaying. Yet this was already the gentlest season upon the storm-towering northern sea, and one of the two months in the year best suited for sailing.
"Main God witness us! Deep winter is a white, endless Ice Sea; early spring is a fog-shrouded sea of mist; high summer is a golden sea of light; early autumn is a fog-shrouded sea of mist again. And by mid-autumn, the wind and waves gradually rise, turning into rainfall and great swells in late autumn, until the storms and sudden snows of early winter freeze everything solid in the bitter cold of midwinter... So high summer in the seventh month, and early autumn in October, are the two months best suited for sailing! And from May to November is the only half-year when passage is possible. All voyages must seize the time—the faster, the better!..."
"Main God bless us! From the Ice Sea to the sea of mist, from the polar-day sea to the sea of wind, from the great-wave sea to the storm sea, from the polar-night sea back to the Ice Sea... These are the majestic four