st double
its ordinary distance; but, although no land was to be seen anywhere in
sight, myriads of little winged insects began all at once to hover over
us, just as if we were close in shore under the lee of some tropical
forest, while our hands, clothes, faces, and the ship's rigging as well,
began to be covered with long, white, hair-like webs, similar to those
woven by spiders in a garden shrubbery! I couldn't make it out at all,
feeling inclined to view the matter as one of those extraordinary freaks
of Nature, which even science is unable to throw any light on--phenomena
that are every now and then exhibited to us, as if only to show our
ignorance of the workings of the invisible Power around us guiding the
movements and physical cosmogony of our sphere; but Jorrocks, who was a
thorough seaman, believing in portents, and thinking that everything
unusual at sea was sent for a purpose, and "meant something," advised my
calling the skipper.

"I 'specs, Mister Leigh," said he, "as how there's a squall brewing, or
summat, for they're pretty plentiful down here when the wind bears round
to the west."

"All right, Jorrocks; I'll give him a hail," I replied; and leaving the
boatswain in charge of the deck, it being my watch, I went down to wake
up the skipper, he having only turned in just before I came on duty.

"How's the glass?" asked Captain Billings, as soon as I had roused him
and told him what I had observed.

"I didn't think of looking at it, sir," I replied.

"Then do so at once," he said; "a sailor should never fail to consult
his barometer, even when the weather is apparently fine, for it gives
warning of any change hours, perhaps, before it may occur. It is an
unswerving guide--more so than the wind and sky in some latitudes."

I hastened now to look at the instrument, and noticing that it had
fallen, I reported the fact to the skipper as he was dressing.

"Ah," said he, "then that has occurred since I turned in;" and,
completing his toilet rapidly, he soon followed me on deck, whither I
returned at once.

In the short interval of my absence below, however, there was a marked
alteration in the scene.

The wind had dropped to the faintest breeze, which presently, too, died
away, succeeded by a dead stillness of the atmosphere, while the sea
became like glass, except where an occasional heave of the unbroken
surface betrayed the restless force beneath that seeming calm; and,
instead of the clear sky