The end of the Trades is at hand. After blowing us through nearly twenty-five degrees of latitude, the wind began to let go yesterday afternoon and to simultaneously haul to the southward, while an immense pall of blue-black cloud rose slowly out of the southwest and solemnly spread itself over the clear sky, with an indication of thunder-squalls in the “white heads” which crowned its summit. Sure enough, in the middle watch there was some mild thunder and lightning, but hardly any rain. However, a drizzle started later on, and as the morning was a soft one and the atmosphere almost as heavy and hot as the steam from a kettle,--a typical tropical morning,--the men were turned to scrubbing the paint-work generally. It was a very long, tedious job, for every particle of white paint had been transformed into a dirty drab in the New York docks. I never saw such a change in a vessel as the men, starting at the taffrail, worked their way forward--poop, bulwarks, boats, skids, everything putting off the grimy look, and assuming in its stead a glossy whiteness which almost hurt the eye. It is strange that we have no head-pump here. On the “Mandalore” there was a very powerful one, worked by four men, and a line of two-inch hose that reached to the after hatch. Our method of washing down the decks, though, is as primitive as irrigation in India, for all the water must be hoisted over the side in a canvas bucket and dumped into a cask, whence it is taken out as wanted. Speaking of the “Mandalore” reminds me of a gruesome tale which MacFoy, the bosun, told me last evening. So broad is his brogue that it was rather hard to understand him, but I gathered the following: One day, about nine years ago, there started from Hamburg, bound to San Francisco, the big Liverpool ship “Falls of Ayr.” The weather growing very bad in the Channel, though, she up helm and ran back for the Downs, to anchor till the gale should break. Shortly before she sailed the “Mandalore” left Hull, also bound around the Horn to San Diego, on what MacFoy said was her maiden voyage. After getting well out into the Channel, though, and finding it as thick as pea-soup, she, too, ran back for the Downs, and before anybody knew what was happening, with a fearful crash she hit the “Falls of Ayr” head on, well aft on the quarter, dividing her nearly in two and smashing her boats, which she carried aft, Liverpool fashion. Very curiously, the “Ayr” had no after companion-way, entrance to the main cabin being effected solely by means of the doors on the main-deck. These, being of iron, crumpled like paper under the impact of collision, and then jammed, so that in the hurry and confusion they baffled all attempts at opening, and before anything could be done the ship foundered, carrying down with her every soul aft,--captain, two mates, steward, and cook, caught like flies in a trap. Nor was this all. Three boats had been broken