UPS AND DOWNS 
indeed, in many particulars, almost an exact parallel 
to Mr. Conrad’s remarkable story, “‘ Typhoon.” 
The vessel was bound from New York for Yoko- 
hama with kerosene. She had been out from New 
York for 196 days without sighting a single ship, and 
when off the coast of New Caledonia she encountered 
the typhoon. The captain’s first warning that a tem- 
pest was brewing was, of course, a sudden and unac- 
countable fall of the glass. Suspecting what was in 
store for him, he went on deck and gave orders to 
prepare fora typhoon. In fifteen minutes he returned 
to his cabin, and found that in that short space of 
time the mercury had actually fallen seven-sixteenths 
more, and he knew from that indication that he would 
shortly have to face a storm, which he may well have 
doubted the powers of his vessel to weather. 
Before very long the tempest struck her in all its 
fury. For five days she encountered the direst perils. 
Her cargo had originally consisted of 80,000 cases of 
kerosene, and during the worst of the tempest 20,000 
had been thrown overboard. On the very first day the 
rudder was carried away, but by extraordinary efforts 
the crew contrived to rig a staging at the stern for 
steering, and they managed to fit up a primitive rudder. 
The captain was injured when the rudder was carried 
away, for the long tiller (the W. C. Watjen was so 
old-fashioned that they did not use a wheel) swept 
round and hit the master heavily on the groin. A 
huge hole, six feet in diameter, had been knocked in 
the stern when the rudder was carried away, and this 
flooded the cabin and the middle part of the ship. 
They managed to stop the hole and bale out the cabin, 
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