M.), without varying a
single hair's breadth, during all of which time the gale was raging with
unmitigated violence from about S.W. by W. to S.W. During this period,
we were travelling about on an average speed of eleven knots; and of
course this must have been the rate of speed of the vortex--distant from
us probably 150 to 200 miles. At 7 P.M. the mercury began to rise
slowly, and at 8 was at 27.60, the weather looking less angry, and the
squalls not so frequent or violent. Verily, our good ship, as she is
darted ahead on the top of one of those huge, long Indian Ocean waves
that pursue her, seems like a mere cock-boat.
It is remarkable that this is the anniversary of the cyclone we took off
the banks of Newfoundland.
_October 18th_--Observing has been particularly vexatious during the
past week. What with the heavy seas constantly rising between the
observer and the horizon, preventing him from producing a contact at the
very instant, it may be, that he is ready for it, the passage of a
flying cloud under the sun when his horizon is all right, and the heavy
rolling of the ship requiring him to pay the utmost care to the
preservation of his balance, and sometimes even to "lose his
sight"--from the necessity of withdrawing one hand suddenly from his
instrument to grasp the rail or the rigging to prevent himself from
falling--what with all these things, the patience of even as patient a
man as myself is sorely tried.
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