lOg mAGMKXTS OF SCIENCE. 
while we steamed across the rainless circle which was thus 
surrounded. Sometimes we plunged into the rain, and once 
or twice, by slightly changing our course, avoided a heavy 
shower. From time to time perfect rainbows spanned the 
heavens from side to side. At times a bow would appear 
i in fragments, showing the keystone of the arch midway in 
air, and its two buttresses on the horizon. In all cases the 
light of the bow could be quenched by a Nicol's prism, with 
its long diagonal tangent to the arc. Sometimes gleaming 
patches of the firmament were seen amid the clouds. AVhen 
viewed in the proper direction, the gleam could be 
quenched by a Nicol's prism, a dark aperture being thus 
opened into stellar space. 
At sunset on Thursday the denser clouds were fiercely 
fringed, while through the lighter ones seemed to issue the 
glow of a conflagration. On Friday morning we sighted 
* Cape Finisterre the extreme end of the arc which sweeps 
from Ushant round the bay of Biscay. Calm spaces of 
blue, in which floated quietly scraps of cumuli, were behind 
us, but in front of us was a horizon of portentous darkness. 
It continued thus threatening throughout the day. Toward 
evening the wind strengthened to a gale, and at dinner it 
was difficult to preserve the plates and dishes from destruc- 
tion. Our thinned company hinted that the rolling had 
other consequences. It was very wild when AVC went to 
bed. I slumbered and slept, but after some time was ren- 
dered anxiously conscious that my body had become a kind 
of projectile, with the ship's side for a target. I gripped 
the edge of my berth to save myself from being thrown 
out. Outside, I could hear somebody say that he had been 
thrown from his berth, and sent spinning to the other side 
of the saloon. The screw labored violently amid the 
lurching; it incessantly quitted the water, and, twirling in 
the air, rattled against its bearings, causing the ship to 
shudder from stem to stern. At times the waves struck 
us, not with the soft impact which might be expected 
from a liquid, but with the sudden solid shock of batter- 
ing-rams. " No man knows the force of water," said one 
of the officers, " until he has experienced a storm at sea." 
These blows followed each other at quicker intervals, the 
screw rattling after each of them, until, finally, the delivery 
of a heavier stroke than ordinary seemed to reduce the 
saloon to chaos. Furniture crashed, glasses rang, and 
