ring the day, he always
walked on the weather side of the poop, while I took the leeward place--
that is, unless the skipper was there too, when of course the latter
promenaded the more honourable beat, and I walked by his side, while Mr
Macdougall had the lee-side then all to himself.

At meal-times also, in the cabin, he took care that we should not meet,
never coming in until after I had left the table, and always rising up
to go on deck should I enter while he was there.

The mate held aloof in a similar fashion from the skipper, the two never
interchanging a word save with reference to the navigation of the
vessel. He seemed, indeed, to have sent us both to Coventry, although
Captain Billings made no comment to me on his conduct; but I did not
fail to notice--what indeed was the popular belief through the ship--
that, if the first mate was paying us out in this way, he did not forget
to "take it out of the crew" in another and very practical mode of his
own, which was by driving them as hard as a workhouse superintendent in
charge of a lot of poor paupers.

To return to the ship and her voyage, I should observe that, after the
south-east Trades failed us--succeeded for a short spell by light
variable winds, as we kept well away from the coast, and so perhaps
missed the land breeze that we might have had--we picked up the south-
west monsoon, which carried us past Rio Janeiro.

The term monsoon, or "monsun," I may explain, is derived from an Arabic
word, _mausim_, meaning "a set time, or season of the year;" and is
generally applied to a system of regular wind currents, like the Trades,
blowing in different hemispheres beyond the range of those old customers
with which ordinary voyagers are familiar.

From Rio we ran down in five days to the Plate River, having fine
weather and making pretty good sailing all the time, as indeed we had
done since crossing the Line; but, arrived off Monte Video, we soon had
warning that our quiet days of progress through the water on one tack,
without shifting a brace or starting a sheet, were numbered with the
fortunate things of the past.

One morning, just when we were in latitude 34 degrees 55 minutes south,
and 55 degrees 10 minutes West, or nearly a hundred miles off the wide
estuary of the Rio de la Plata, I noticed a peculiar phenomenon.

The wind was blowing from the northward of west, while the atmosphere
was bright and clear, so that the horizon was extended to almo