518 A Twenty-third Memoir on the Law of Storms. [No. 6. 



evident coming struggle ; and well she behaved through the whole of it, with 

 top gallant masts down on deck, and 160 fs. of good coir cable out j she 

 braved the whole without starting an inch from her position. However, I 

 am of opinion that we did not lay in the heaviest track of this breeze 

 although very near it. The glasses were at one time very uneasy, and a 

 sudden fall occurred in the Marine Barometer which drew my instant atten- 

 tion. I thought I might have made a mistake in the reading off? but No, 

 repeated examinations showed me I was correct, the Aneroid and Sympieso- 

 meter followed the movement subsequently, but not so quick as the Marine 

 Barometer (by Newman, London). The abstract will show you the course 

 of the wind from the 18th to 8 p. M. of the 23rd. 



On the 24th. — After the weather had become fine, a strong set to the 

 S. E. occurred and brought down with it pieces of wreck, painted yellow and 

 white, also quantities of dried cocoanuts,* but the most remarkable sight was 

 the quantity of dead wild fowl, such as ducks, snipe, curlew and others ; which 

 poor birds were literally, I believe, pressed into the sea by the sheet of falling 

 rain I have before mentioned, many of them were about us during the gale, 

 but could not fetch on board. There was no forked lightning during this 

 breeze but occasionally bursts of light, N. E. and S. E. like the " Northern 

 Lights'' in Europe ! The Temperature of the atmosphere was also agreeable 

 and almost constant, without any hot blasts. The crisis of the gale 1 should 

 say was with us from 4 ?. m. of the 22nd to 4 a. m. of the 23rd when the 

 wind had gone round (southerly) to W. S. W. and then sulked itself out in 

 decreasing squalls. 



I have printed the following table entire, although some of the 

 remarks are anticipated in the preceding letter. But the whole is 

 so complete a register of the passage of a Cyclone close to the 

 Light Vessel and of the various atmospheric disturbances and signs 

 attending it, that I would not change any part of the record. Mr. 

 Hansom in a subsequent letter says his Sympiesoraeter continues to 

 increase in difference from the other instruments, so that it may 

 have been a little deranged at the time of the Cyclone. 



* Which Mr. Ransom supposes must have been from the wreck of a Maldive 

 boat. 



