of the year, sweep,
raging, over the face of the Caribbean, leaving death and destruction in
their wake--and there were indications that a change of weather was
impending. The rainy season had long set in, and skies overcast by
great masses of slate-blue cloud surcharged with rain and electricity
were no new thing to the _Nonsuch's_ crew, but the aspect of the sky on
this particular day was of an altogether different character. It had
begun with a paling of the brilliant azure, and had been so gradual that
it was quite impossible to say when it had begun; the only thing certain
was that a change was taking place and that a film of thin, transparent
vapour was overspreading the entire sky and gradually reducing the sun
in its midst to a shapeless blotch of dull yellow, while the wind
continued steadily to decrease in strength. Two hours before the time
of sunset the great luminary had become so completely obscured that all
trace of him was lost; yet nothing in the shape of a cloud was to be
seen, nothing but the veil of colourless vapour which obscured the sky,
yet left the whole expanse of ocean almost unnaturally clear from one
horizon to the other; and all the time the wind was falling, so that
when at length the night suddenly closed down about the ship and she
became enveloped in a darkness that might almost be felt, she had no
more than bare steerage way; while by eight o'clock in the evening even
this was lost, and the _Nonsuch_ lay breathlessly becalmed and slowly
swinging with the low heave of the swell, with her head first this way
and then that. And with the cessation of the wind, the heat, which had
all day been stifling, became so intolerable that the idle crew could no
nothing but lie about the decks, gasping, for to go below was altogether
out of the question.

Thus matters continued until close upon midnight, when a sudden flicker
of sheet-lightning lit up the scene for perhaps a couple of seconds,
revealing a sky packed with clouds of so threatening and portentous an
aspect that Gorge, suddenly smitten with the apprehension that he had
already delayed too long, gave the order for the fore and main topsails
to be close-reefed and all other canvas to be furled with the utmost
expedition possible, and the men, with much grumbling, crept out from
their secluded corners and slowly proceeded to drag their relaxed and
sweating bodies up the rigging. To shorten sail in such opaque darkness
as then enveloped