108 FRAGMENTS OP 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 

 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 NicoFs prism, witli 

 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 Nicolas 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 we 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-rains. " 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 



