, however, I made some
observations to calculate the distance we had gone over, and I put them
down in my journal. Since we left Port Gretchen, we had traveled two
hundred and seventy leagues--more than eight hundred miles--on this
great inland sea; we were, therefore, six hundred and twenty leagues
from Iceland, and exactly under England.

CHAPTER 32

THE BATTLE OF THE ELEMENTS

Friday, August 21st. This morning the magnificent geyser had wholly
disappeared. The wind had freshened up, and we were fast leaving the
neighborhood of Henry's Island. Even the roaring sound of the mighty
column was lost to the ear.

The weather, if, under the circumstances, we may use such an expression,
is about to change very suddenly. The atmosphere is being gradually
loaded with vapors, which carry with them the electricity formed by the
constant evaporation of the saline waters; the clouds are slowly but
sensibly falling towards the sea, and are assuming a dark-olive texture;
the electric rays can scarcely pierce through the opaque curtain which
has fallen like a drop scene before this wondrous theater, on the stage
of which another and terrible drama is soon to be enacted. This time it
is no fight of animals; it is the fearful battle of the elements.

I feel that I am very peculiarly influenced, as all creatures are on
land when a deluge is about to take place.

The cumuli, a perfectly oval kind of cloud, piled upon the south,
presented a most awful and sinister appearance, with the pitiless aspect
often seen before a storm. The air is extremely heavy; the sea is
comparatively calm.

In the distance, the clouds have assumed the appearance of enormous
balls of cotton, or rather pods, piled one above the other in
picturesque confusion. By degrees, they appear to swell out, break, and
gain in number what they lose in grandeur; their heaviness is so great
that they are unable to lift themselves from the horizon; but under the
influence of the upper currents of air, they are gradually broken up,
become much darker, and then present the appearance of one single layer
of a formidable character; now and then a lighter cloud, still lit up
from above, rebounds upon this grey carpet, and is lost in the opaque
mass.

There can be no doubt that the entire atmosphere is saturated with
electric fluid; I am myself wholly impregnated; my hairs literally stand
on end as if under the influence of a galvanic battery. If one of my
compani