340 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



her heels as to the Charts, and performed the extraordinary feat 

 of crossing, the sixteenth day out from New York, the jjarallel of 

 5° north. 



971. The next day she was well south of 4° north, and in the 

 Doldrums, longitude 34° west. 



Now her heels became paralyzed, for Fortune seems to have de- 

 serted her a while — at least her master, as the winds failed him, 

 feared so ; they gave him his motive power ; they were fickle, and 

 he was helplessly baffled by them. The bugbear of a northwest 

 current off Cape St. Koque (§ 470) began to loom up in his im- 

 agination, and to look alarming ; then the dread of falling to lee- 

 ward came upon him ; chances and luck seemed to conspire against 

 him, and the mere possibility of finding his fine ship back-strapped 

 filled the mind of Nickels with evil forebodings, and shook his 

 faith in his guide. He doubted the Charts, and committed the 

 mistake of the passage. 



972. The Sailing Directions had cautioned the navigator, again 

 and again, not to attempt to fan along to the eastward in the equa- 

 torial doldrums ; for, by so doing, he would himself engage in a 

 fruitless strife with baffling airs, sometimes re-enforced in then- 

 weakness by westerly currents. But the winds had failed, and so 

 too, the smart captain of the Flying Fish evidently thought, had 

 the Sailing Directions. They advise the navigator, in all such 

 cases, to dash right across this calm streak, stand boldly on, take 

 advantage of slants in the w^ind, and, by this device, make easting 

 enough to clear the land. So, forgetting that the Charts are 

 founded on the experience of great numbers who had gone before 

 him, Nickels, being tempted, tiirned a deaf ear to the caution, and 

 flung away three whole days, and more, of most precious time, 

 dallying in the doldrums. 



He spent four days about the parallel of 3° north, and his ship 

 left the doldrums, after this waste of time, nearly upon the same 

 meridian, at which she entered them. 



973. She was still in 34°, the current keeping her back just as 

 fast as she could fan east. After so great a loss, her very clever 

 master, doubting his own judgment, became sensible of his error. 

 Leaving the spell-bound calms behind him, where he had under- 



