'An ocean hurdle,' said he, still very pale, and watching the wheel as the man revolved the spokes to bring the ship to. 'What was it, Edward?' cried his wife. 'A roller,' said he. 'I hope there may not be another.' He looked to leeward. 'One of those volcanic jokes or hurricane survivals which try periodically to swamp Ascension and St. Helena. Help Miss Otway below, Mary, and give her a little drop of wine, and take a nip yourself.' CHAPTER VIII A HURRICANE Our voyage, after this incident of the roller down to below the latitude of Cape Horn, was uneventful. I had looked with dread to the cold of that stormy and desolate part of the world; but when we arrived, having struck a parallel, indeed, beyond which the captain informed us we were not to push much further, I found the ocean climate by no mean insupportable. My wardrobe had been a liberal equipment. I had furs, wraps and the like in plenty, and all very warm; then again my health had wonderfully improved, and this helped me to find the cold a lesser evil than I had feared. Throughout the days a fire glowed in the cabin. And yet it was towards the close of June when we were nearly as far south as the captain intended to go, and June is mid-winter in that part of the world, with but four or five hours of light only in the day, and the sun a little scarlet ball whose arc of flight might scarcely frame an iceberg. All this while the captain remained the changed man I have before attempted to express him. I did not observe that his despondency increased upon him. He was as one who lives with some fixed belief in his head, who, depressing his bearing and manner to a level, leaves himself there, never sinking, but never rising either. For the rest it had been as it still was, a monotonous routine of bells and meals, reading, chatting, playing at games in the cabin; sometimes we had spoken a ship; once we had floated quietly into a school of whales which made the cold black deep lying under the large stars of the south as beautiful as any dream of poet with the silver willowy curves of light they blew to the moon. In this time I found no opportunity to send a second letter home. I cannot remember our latitude on this day I am to write about. I understood that, for reasons my memory will not suffer me to explain, we had made more southing than was necessary, whilst we were further to the east--half-way indeed, to Georgia Island,--than the captain and mate cared to talk about. The weather had been sulky all the morning; large snow clouds in soft dyes of darkness upon the stooping, corrugated, leaden sky, floated sullenly athwart our mast-heads, but without any squally outfly of wind so far, though often the snow fell thickly. A large westerly swell was running, and the ship bowed heavily upon it, finding nothing to steady her in the small beam breeze that blew bitter as ice straight out of the south.