tening sky seems to remind Dunn so powerfully of a Chinese typhoon,
depend upon it we are going to have a taste of a West Indian hurricane,
or cyclone. I have read somewhere that they frequently originate out
here in the heart of the Atlantic."

"If we're agoin' to have a typhoon, or a hurricane, or a cyclone--
whichever you likes to call it--all I say is, `The Lord ha' mercy upon
us,'" remarked Dunn. "Big ships has all their work cut out to weather
one o' them gales; so what are we agoin' to do in this here open boat,
I'd like to know?"

"Have you ever been through a typhoon, Dunn?" I asked.

"Yes, sir, I have, and more than one of 'em," was the reply. "I was
caught in one off the Paracels, in the old _Audacious_ frigate,--as fine
a sea-boat as ever was launched,--and, in less time than it takes to
tell of it, we was dismasted and hove down on our beam-ends; and it took
us all our time to keep the hooker afloat and get her into Hong-Kong
harbour. And the very next year I was catched again--in the Bashee
Channel, this time--in the _Lively_ schooner, of six guns. We knowed it
was comin'; it gived us good warnin' and left us plenty of time to get
ready for it; so Mr Barker--the lieutenant in command--gived orders to
send the yards and both topmasts down on deck, and rig in the jib-boom;
and then he stripped her down to a close-reefed boom foresail. But we
capsized--reg'larly `turned turtle'--when the gale struck us, and only
five of us lived to tell the tale. As to this here boat, if a hurricane
anything at all like them Chinee typhoons gets hold of her, why, we
shall just be blowed clean away out o' water and up among the clouds!
And that's just what's goin' to happen, if signs counts for anything."

Wherewith the speaker thrust both hands into his trouser pockets,
disgustedly spat a small ocean of tobacco-juice overboard, and subsided
into gloomy silence.

It was a sufficiently alarming retrospect, in all conscience, to which
we had just listened, and the prophetic utterance wherewith it had been
wound up, while powerfully suggestive of a highly novel and picturesque
experience in store for us, was certainly not attractive enough to cause
us to look forward to its fulfilment with undisturbed serenity;
nevertheless, I did not feel like tamely giving in without making some
effort to save the boat and the lives with which I had been entrusted,
so I set myself seriously to consider how we could best utilise such