The Mighty Deep 



Small wonder that he should. Those im- 

 petuous and short-lived eddies are terrible in 

 their fury. Their winds blow with a fierceness 

 never approached by the stiffest Trade. A hurri- 

 cane, tearing over Earth's surface at the rate of 

 one hundred and twenty miles an hour, reduces 

 the most muscular of men to helplessness. 



None the less, such a hurricane is in itself 

 a mere accident, a mere passing incident, a 

 mere swirl of air, coming into being to adjust 

 a lost balance, and vanishing so soon as its 

 work is done. We have seen tiny swirls of 

 air dancing along the road, on a windy day, 

 sweeping up bits of straw or dried leaves into 

 their embrace. Such little swirls are hurricanes 

 in miniature. The real thing levels forests, 

 wrecks towns, lashes the ocean into mountainous 

 heights of water, sinks gallant ships, destroys 

 human lives. Yet the little swirl and the hurri- 

 cane are closely akin. 



Only in recent years has the circular — more 

 strictly, the oval — shape of a hurricane become 

 known. It may be described as a revolving 

 eddy of air, the winds pouring in a corkscrew- 

 like fashion round the centre, inwards from with- 

 out, and upwards from within. Another kind of 

 air-eddy, called an anti-cyclone, gyrates just the 



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