QETTING SOUTUWARD. 59 



where I have embraced the prize in a grim determina- 

 tion to hold him at all hazards, besides being literally 

 drenched with his blood. 



Like all our fishing operations on board the Cachalot, 

 this day's fishing was conducted on scientific principles, 

 and resulted in twenty-five fine fish being shipped, 

 which were a welcome addition to our scanty allowance. 

 Happily for us, they would not take the salt in that 

 sultry latitude soon enough to preserve them ; for, when 

 they can be salted, they become like brine itself, and 

 are quite unfit for food. Yet we should have been 

 compelled to eat salt bonito, or go without meat 

 altogether, if it had been possible to cure them. 



We were now fairly in the " horse latitudes," and, 

 much to our relief, the rain came down in occasional 

 deluges, permitting us to wash well and often. I sup- 

 pose the rains of the tropics have been often enough 

 described to need no meagre attempts of mine to convey 

 an idea of them ; yet I have often wished I could 

 make home-keeping friends understand how far short 

 what they often speak of as a "tropical shower " falls 

 of the genuine article. The nearest I can get to it is 

 the idea of an ocean suspended overhead, out of which 

 the bottom occasionally falls. Nothing is visible or 

 audible but the glare and roar of falling water, and a 

 ship's deck, despite the many outlets, is full enough to 

 swim about in in a very few minutes. At such times the 

 whole celestial machinery of rain-making may be seen 

 in full woiking order. Five or six mighty water-spouts 

 in various stages of development were often within 

 easy distance of us ; once, indeed, we watched the birth, 

 growth, and death of one less than a mile away. First, 

 a big, black cloud, even among that great assemblage 



