off my breast and
side, where I have embraced the prize in a grim determination to hold
him at all hazards, besides being literally drenched with his blood.

Like all our fishing operations on board the CACHALOT, this day's
fishing was conducted on scientific principles, and resulted in
twenty-five fine fish being shipped, which were a welcome addition to
our scanty allowance. Happily for us, they would not take the salt in
that sultry latitude soon enough to preserve them; for, when they can be
salted, they become like brine itself, and are quite unfit for food.
Yet we should have been compelled to eat salt bonito, or go without meat
altogether, if it had been possible to cure them.

We were now fairly in the "horse latitudes," and, much to our relief,
the rain came down in occasional deluges, permitting us to wash well
and often. I suppose the rains of the tropics have been often enough
described to need no meagre attempts of mine to convey an idea of them;
yet I have often wished I could make home-keeping friends understand how
far short what they often speak of as a "tropical shower" falls of the
genuine article. The nearest I can get to it is the idea of an ocean
suspended overhead, out, of which the bottom occasionally falls. Nothing
is visible or audible but the glare and roar of falling water, and a
ship's deck, despite the many outlets, is full enough to swim about in
in a very few minutes. At such times the whole celestial machinery
of rain-making may be seen in full working order. Five or six mighty
waterspouts in various stages of development were often within easy
distance of us; once, indeed, we watched the birth, growth, and death
of one less than a mile away. First, a big, black cloud, even among that
great assemblage of NIMBI, began to belly downward, until the centre
of it tapered into a stem, and the whole mass looked like a vast,
irregularly-moulded funnel. Lower and lower it reached, as if feeling
for a soil in which to grow, until the sea beneath was agitated
sympathetically, rising at last in a sort of pointed mound to meet the
descending column. Our nearness enabled us to see that both descending
and rising parts were whirling violently in obedience to some invisible
force, and when they had joined each other, although the spiral motion
did not appear to continue, the upward rush of the water through what
was now a long elastic tube was very plainly to be seen. The cloud
overhead grew blacker a