ight have sufficient offing to prevent their reaching port again
or beaching their craft. At daybreak, as far as we could judge, we were
about twenty miles offshore to the northward and westward of Little
Bonny, in the track of any vessel bound for the West Indies. The night
was dark with occasional rain squalls, when the heavens would open and
the water come down in a flood. Anxiously we all watched for daylight,
which comes under the equator with a suddenness very different from the
prolonged twilight of higher latitudes. At the first glimmer in the east
every eye was strained on the horizon, all eager, all anxious to be the
first to sight anything within our vision. The darkness soon gave way to
gray morn. Day was dawning, when suddenly a Krooman by my side seized
my hand and, without saying a word, pointed inshore. I looked, but
could see nothing. All eyes were focused in that direction, and in a few
minutes the faint outline of a vessel appeared against the sky. She was
some miles inshore of us, and as the day brightened we made her out to
be a brigantine (an uncommon rig in those days), standing across
our bows, with all studding sails set on the starboard side, indeed
everything that could pull, including water sails and save-all. We were
on the same tack heading to the northward. We set everything that would
draw, and kept off two points, bringing the wind abeam so as to head her
off.

The breeze was light and off the land. We had not yet been seen against
the darker western horizon, but we knew it could only be a few minutes
longer before their sharp eyes would make us out. Soon we saw the
studding sails and all kites come down by the run and her yards braced
up sharp on the same tack as ours. We also hauled by the wind. At
sunrise she was four points on our weather bow, distant about four
miles. We soon perceived that she could outsail our brig and if the wind
held would escape. Gradually she drew away from us until she was hull
down. Our only hope now was that the land breeze would cease and the sea
breeze come in. As the sun rose we gladly noticed the wind lessening,
until at eleven o'clock it was calm. Not a breath ruffled the surface of
the sea; the sun's rays in the zenith were reflected as from a mirror;
the waters seemed like molten lead.

I know of nothing more depressing than a calm in the tropics,--a raging
sun overhead, around an endless expanse of dead sea, and a feeling of
utter helplessness that