Village books

If the boats
tried for Acapulco they would get out of the doldrums when half-way
there--in case they ever got half-way--and then they would be in
lamentable case, for there they would meet the north-east trades coming
down in their teeth, and these boats were so rigged that they could not
sail within eight points of the wind. So they wisely started northward,
with a slight slant to the west. They had but ten days' short allowance
of food; the long-boat was towing the others; they could not depend on
making any sort of definite progress in the doldrums, and they had four
or five hundred miles of doldrums in front of them yet. They are the
real equator, a tossing, roaring, rainy belt, ten or twelve hundred miles
broad, which girdles the globe.
It rained hard the first night and all got drenched, but they filled up
their water-butt. The brothers were in the stern with the captain, who
steered. The quarters were cramped; no one got much sleep. 'Kept on our
course till squalls headed us off.'
Stormy and squally the next morning, with drenching rains.


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