ut had never before beheld until this day. It is known
among sailors as the phenomenon of "the ripples." I was on the
forecastle superintending the bathing operations when it first made its
appearance, the sky being at the time clear and cloudless, with the sun
blazing in its midst like a huge ball of living flame, while the water
was so oil-smooth and glassy that it was quite impossible to distinguish
the horizon, or to determine where the sea ended and the sky began. It
was hotter than I had ever felt it before; dressed only in a thin shirt
and the thinnest of white trousers, the perspiration was gushing so
freely from every pore of my body that my light and airy garments were
saturated with it, while the atmosphere was so stagnant that it seemed
impossible to inhale a sufficiency of air for breathing purposes. Under
these trying conditions we were, of course, all anxiously watching for a
breeze; and it was with a feeling of exquisite delight that, happening
to look abroad toward the north, I saw the horizon strongly marked with
a line of delicate blue, indicating, as I believed, the approach of a
thrice-welcome breeze. In the exuberance of my delight I shouted to
Mendouca, who was reclining in a hammock aft slung from the main-boom,
and, of course, under the shelter of the awning--

"Hurrah! here comes a breeze at last, although I do not know where it
has sprung from, for there is not a cloud to be seen."

Mendouca sprang up in his hammock at this news, and looked in the
direction to which I was pointing; then sank back again, disgustedly.

"Pshaw, that is no breeze--worse luck!" he cried. "That is only `the
ripples.'"

"The ripples?" I ejaculated. "Surely not. It has every appearance of
a genuine breeze!"

Mendouca, however, was too intensely disgusted to reply. Meanwhile, the
streak of blue, stretching right athwart the horizon, was advancing
rapidly, bearing straight down upon the brigantine, and soon it became
possible to see the tiny wavelets sparkling in the dazzling sunlight,
and to detect a soft, musical, liquid-tinkling sound, such as one may
hear when the tide is rising on a flat, sandy beach on a calm summer's
day. But by this time I had made the disappointing discovery that the
blue line was merely a belt of rippling water about a quarter of a mile
wide, with a perfectly calm, glassy surface beyond it, and, as there was
no advance-guard of cat's-paws, such as may usually be seen playing on