g through the rigging and
cold green seas boarding their weather bow. It was the first break in
the friendly trade-wind, and Swarth confessed to himself--though not to
his men--that he was out of his reckoning; but one thing he was sure
of--that this was a cyclone with a dangerous center.

The brig labored heavily during the lulls as the seas rose, and when
the squalls came, flattening them to a level, she would lie down like a
tired animal, while the aeolian song aloft prevented orders being heard
unless shouted near by. Captain Swarth went below and smashed the glass
of an aneroid barometer (newly invented and lately acquired from an
outward-bound Englishman), in which he had not much confidence, but
which might tell him roughly of the air-density. Feeling of the
indicator, and judging by the angle it made with the center,--marked by
a ring at the top,--he found a measurement which startled him. Setting
the adjustable hand over the indicator for future reference, he
returned to the deck, ill at ease, and ordered the topsails
goose-winged. By the time the drenched and despairing blind men had
accomplished this, a further lowering of the barometer induced him to
furl topsails and foretopmast-staysail, and allow the brig to ride
under a storm-spanker. Then the increasing wind required that this also
should be taken in, and its place filled by a tarpaulin lashed to the
weather main-rigging.

"Angel," said the captain, shouting into the mate's ear, "there's only
one thing to account for this. We're on the right tack for the Southern
Ocean; but the storm-center is overtaking us faster than we can drift
away from it. We must scud out of its way."

So they took in the tarpaulin and set the foretopmast-staysail again,
and, with the best two helmsmen at the wheel, they sped before the
tempest for four hours, during which there was no increase of the wind
and no change in the barometer; it still remained at its lowest
reading.

"Keep the wind as much on the port quarter as you dare," ordered
Swarth. "We're simply sailing around the center, and perhaps in with
the vortex."

They obeyed him as they could, and in a few hours more there was less
fury in the blast and a slight rise in the barometer.

"I was right," said the captain. "The center will pass us now. We're
out of its way."

They brought the brig around amid a crashing of seas over the port
rail, and stowing the staysail, pinned her again on the port tack with
th