omewhere about the tropical belt, Capricorn you know,
(O, those tender lessons in geography, my Emmy!) quite becalmed; the sea
like glass, and the sky like brass, and the air in a most stagnant heat:
our good ship motionless, dead in a dead blue sea it was

'Idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.'

"The sails were hanging loosely in the shrouds: every one set, from
sky-scraper to stud-sail, in hopes to catch a breath of wind. My
fellow-passengers and the crew, almost melted, were lying about, as weak
as parboiled eels: it was high-noon, all things silent and subdued by
that intolerable blaze; for the vertical sun, over our multiplied
awnings and umbrellas, burnt us up, fierce as a furnace.

"I was leaning over the gangway, looking wistfully at the cool, clear,
deep sea, wherefrom the sailors were trying to persuade a shark to come
on board us, when, all at once, in the south-east quarter, I noticed a
little round black cloud, thrown up from the horizon like a
cricket-ball. As any thing is attractive in such sameness as perpetual
sea and sky, my discovery was soon made known, and among the first to
our captain.

"Calling for his Dolland, and bidding his second lieutenant run quick to
the cabin and look at the barometer, he viewed the little cloud in
evident anxiety, and shook his head with a solemn air: more than one
light-hearted woman thinking he was quizzing them.

"Up came Lieutenant Joyce, looking as if he had seen a ghost in the
cabin.

"'The mercury, sir, is falling just as rapidly as it would rise if you
plunged it into boiling water: an inch a minute or so!"

"Our captain saw the danger instantly, and, brave as Trueman is, I never
saw a man look paler.

"To drive all the passengers below, and pen them in with closed hatches
and storm-shutters, (so hot, Emmy, that the black-hole of Calcutta must
have been an ice-house to it: how the foolish people abused our wise
skipper, and more than one pompous old Indian threatened him with an
action for false imprisonment!) this huddling away was the first effort;
and simultaneously with it, the crew were all over the rigging, furling
sails, hurriedly, hurriedly.

"Meanwhile (for I was last on deck), that little cloud seemed whirling
within itself, and many others gathered round it, all dancing about on
the horizon, as if sheaves of mischief tossed about by devils: I don't
wish to be poetical, Emmy, for my heart is very, very sad; but if ever
the powers of t