t long on the starlit deck that night, thinking of ships, and
watching the constellations on their voyage.

On the following day, September 13, a large four-masted ship passed
some distance to windward, heading north.

The sloop was now rapidly drawing toward the region of doldrums, and
the force of the trade-winds was lessening. I could see by the ripples
that a counter-current had set in. This I estimated to be about
sixteen miles a day. In the heart of the counter-stream the rate was
more than that setting eastward.

September 14 a lofty three-masted ship, heading north, was seen from
the masthead. Neither this ship nor the one seen yesterday was within
signal distance, yet it was good even to see them. On the following
day heavy rain-clouds rose in the south, obscuring the sun; this was
ominous of doldrums. On the 16th the _Spray_ entered this gloomy
region, to battle with squalls and to be harassed by fitful calms; for
this is the state of the elements between the northeast and the
southeast trades, where each wind, struggling in turn for mastery,
expends its force whirling about in all directions. Making this still
more trying to one's nerve and patience, the sea was tossed into
confused cross-lumps and fretted by eddying currents. As if something
more were needed to complete a sailor's discomfort in this state, the
rain poured down in torrents day and night. The _Spray_ struggled and
tossed for ten days, making only three hundred miles on her course in
all that time. I didn't say anything!

On September 23 the fine schooner _Nantasket_ of Boston, from Bear
River, for the river Plate, lumber-laden, and just through the
doldrums, came up with the _Spray_, and her captain passing a few
words, she sailed on. Being much fouled on the bottom by shell-fish,
she drew along with her fishes which had been following the _Spray_,
which was less provided with that sort of food. Fishes will always
follow a foul ship. A barnacle-grown log adrift has the same
attraction for deep-sea fishes. One of this little school of deserters
was a dolphin that had followed the _Spray_ about a thousand miles,
and had been content to eat scraps of food thrown overboard from my
table; for, having been wounded, it could not dart through the sea to
prey on other fishes. I had become accustomed to seeing the dolphin,
which I knew by its scars, and missed it whenever it took occasional
excursions away from the sloop. One day, after it had been