But even the danger of this most dangerous quarter admits of degrees. It is greatest where the storm is sweeping round the most curved part of its track, which happens in about latitude twenty-five or thirty degrees. In this case a ship may pass twice through the vortex of the storm. Here hurricanes have worked their most destructive effects. And hence it is that sailors dread, most of all, that part of the Atlantic near Florida and the Bahamas, and the region of the Indian Ocean which lies south of Bourbon and Mauritius. To show how important it is that captains should understand the theory of cyclones in both hemispheres, we shall here relate the manner in which Captain J. V. Hall escaped from a typhoon of the China seas. About noon, when three days out from Macao, Captain Hall saw ‘a most wild and uncommon-looking halo round the sun.’ On the afternoon of the next day, the barometer had commenced to fall rapidly; and though, as yet, the weather was fine, orders were at once given to prepare for a heavy gale. Towards evening a bank of cloud was seen in the south-east, but when night closed the weather was still calm and the water smooth, though the sky looked wild and a scud was coming on from the north-east. ‘I was much interested,’ says Captain Hall, ‘in watching for the commencement of the gale, which I now felt sure was coming. That bank to the south-east was the meteor (cyclone) approaching us, the north-east scud, the outer north-west portion of it; and when at night a strong gale came on about north, or north-north-west, I felt certain we were on its western and south-western verge. It rapidly increased in violence; but I was pleased to see the wind veering to the north-west, as it convinced me that I had put the ship on the right track—namely, on the starboard tack, standing, of course, to the south-west. From ten A.M. to three P.M. it blew with great violence, but the ship being well prepared, rode comparatively easy. The barometer was now very low, the centre of the storm passing to the northward of us, to which we might have been very near had we in the first place put the ship on the larboard tack. But the most remarkable point of Captain Hall’s account remains to be mentioned. He had gone out of his course to avoid the storm, but when the wind fell to a moderate gale he thought it a pity to lie so far from his proper course, and made sail to the north-west. ‘In less than two hours the barometer again began to fall and the storm to rage in heavy gusts.’ He bore again to the south-east, and the weather rapidly improved. There can be little doubt that but for Captain Hall’s knowledge of the law of cyclones, his ship and crew would have been placed in serious jeopardy, since in the heart of a Chinese typhoon a ship has been known to be thrown on her beam-ends when not showing a yard of canvas.