e had not sighted so much as one
solitary sail since leaving the island; but at dawn on the sixth morning
of the calm we sighted the mastheads of a small craft far away down in
the southern board, which, upon being inspected from aloft, proved to be
a schooner of, possibly, a hundred or one hundred and twenty tons
measurement. During the day it became apparent that she was bound to
the northward, for she assiduously utilised every chance breath of wind
that touched her to work her way in that direction, while we did what we
could to make way in the opposite direction, with the result that by
sunset we had shortened the distance between us by three or four miles.
The succeeding four days were simply repetitions in all respects of the
same wearisome, monotonous state of things; yet the way in which the
_Mercury_ and the strange schooner insensibly drew ever nearer to each
other during that time was singularly illustrative of what could be
accomplished in the way of progress by sailing-ships, even in the
embrace of what was to all intents and purposes a stark calm, by active
and intelligent officers. It is true that we in the _Mercury_ did but
little toward the abbreviation of the distance between the two vessels,
for the reason already mentioned, yet when the tenth day of the calm
dawned the schooner was hull-up in the southern board, some six miles
distant from us.

None but those who have endured a long spell of calm in the vicinity of
the Equator can have the faintest idea of the deadly monotony of the
experience. Day after day comes and goes, bringing a cloudless sky of
dazzling blue, in the midst of which circles a merciless sun, from the
scorching rays of which there is no escape, even under an awning; for
the stoutest canvas seems incapable of completely intercepting the fiery
darts that cause the pitch to bubble up out of the deck seams, and heat
metal and dark-painted wood to a temperature high enough to blister the
hand unwarily laid upon either. Even though an awning be spread, and
shelter sought thereunder, those burning rays are not to be evaded; for
they flash up from the mirror-like surface of the sea with a power which
is scarcely to be distinguished from that exerted by those which fall
direct from the great luminary himself. As to going below in order to
escape the arrows of the fiery archer, the thing is not to be thought
of; for the whole interior of the ship is, at such times, simply an
oven, the