rarified by the heat of the equator,
passes up into the higher atmosphere, producing a stagnation of the wind
currents; and hence ensue calms that vary in duration according to the
position of the sun, whether north or south of the Line, calms that are
sometimes accompanied by tremendous rain showers, and sometimes varied
with frequent squalls and thunder and lightning, followed sometimes by
thick fogs hanging on the surface of the water.

The belt of the Doldrums has an average width of some six degrees, or
about five hundred miles of latitude, roughly speaking; and in crossing
it we were not much more favoured than most navigators, having to knock
about for seven days under a sweltering tropical sun--taking advantage
of whatever little breeze we could get that aided our progress to the
equator, until we emerged from the retarding influence of this zone of
inactivity, some three degrees to the northward of the Line, when we
fortunately succeeded in sailing into the south-east Trades almost
before we expected.

We had, however, lost some little way eastwards through the sweep of the
Guinea current, a stream which seems strangely enough to take its rise
in the middle of the ocean, and makes a sudden set thence towards the
Bight of Benin; so, Captain Billings, who appeared to be prejudiced on
the subject of the western passage of the equator, instead of now trying
again to shape a true south course towards our point of destination,
Cape Horn, directed a parallel so as to fetch the Brazilian coast. The
ship, consequently, after leaving the Doldrums was steered south-west
and by west, a direction which, if preserved, would have run us on in a
straight line to the Rocas, a dangerous reef stretching out into the sea
off the westward peak of the island of Fernando Noronha, some eighty-
four miles out from the mainland to the northward of Cape Saint Roque.

This was on our thirtieth day out from the Bristol Channel, two days
before the first mate and I had come to loggerheads; and since then the
vessel had kept on in the same course, closing with the equator each
hour under the steady south-easterly breeze which we had with us, on the
port tack, and speeding even more rapidly to the west than our skipper
imagined--for, through the set of some current to the northward and
westwards, our dead reckoning showed a wide discrepancy from the
position of the ship by observation, as I made it on the day of the
row--when, as I've stat