sses of
cumuli. Other low clouds passed swiftly by. The swollen sea rose in
huge billows. The birds disappeared with the exception of the petrels,
those friends of the storm. The barometer fell sensibly, and indicated
an extreme extension of the vapours. The mixture of the storm glass
was decomposed under the influence of the electricity that pervaded the
atmosphere. The tempest burst on the 18th of May, just as the Nautilus
was floating off Long Island, some miles from the port of New York. I
can describe this strife of the elements! for, instead of fleeing to
the depths of the sea, Captain Nemo, by an unaccountable caprice, would
brave it at the surface. The wind blew from the south-west at first.
Captain Nemo, during the squalls, had taken his place on the platform.
He had made himself fast, to prevent being washed overboard by the
monstrous waves. I had hoisted myself up, and made myself fast also,
dividing my admiration between the tempest and this extraordinary man
who was coping with it. The raging sea was swept by huge cloud-drifts,
which were actually saturated with the waves. The Nautilus, sometimes
lying on its side, sometimes standing up like a mast, rolled and
pitched terribly. About five o'clock a torrent of rain fell, that
lulled neither sea nor wind. The hurri cane blew nearly forty leagues
an hour. It is under these conditions that it overturns houses, breaks
iron gates, displaces twenty-four pounders. However, the Nautilus, in
the midst of the tempest, confirmed the words of a clever engineer,
"There is no well-constructed hull that cannot defy the sea." This was
not a resisting rock; it was a steel spindle, obedient and movable,
without rigging or masts, that braved its fury with impunity. However,
I watched these raging waves attentively. They measured fifteen feet
in height, and 150 to 175 yards long, and their speed of propagation
was thirty feet per second. Their bulk and power increased with the
depth of the water. Such waves as these, at the Hebrides, have
displaced a mass weighing 8,400 lb. They are they which, in the
tempest of December 23rd, 1864, after destroying the town of Yeddo, in
Japan, broke the same day on the shores of America. The intensity of
the tempest increased with the night. The barometer, as in 1860 at
Reunion during a cyclone, fell seven-tenths at the close of day. I saw
a large vessel pass the horizon struggling painfully. She was trying
to lie to und