Three weeks passed, and we had made good progress since leaving port. I soon found my sea legs, as Ralph expressed it, and often climbed the rigging as far as the tops. I went out on the jibboom and caught bonitas—a deep-sea fish of a steely blue color which preys remorselessly upon the flying-fish; I read; I learned to make nautical knots of various kinds, and actually felt ten years younger than I had in New Orleans. There was nothing to bother or irritate me; no telephones, no whistles blowing, no mail to open, no newspapers to read; in a word, I was in a new world altogether, and began to get so fat that Seth Hawkins, the mate, one day told me that I should have to shake a reef or two out of my clothes by the time I got back to New York. After a particularly fine day’s run, I said to Ralph, who had just marked it on the chart, “I had no idea that sailing vessels could go fast. As this rate we shall soon be across the Equator. You say we are only 8° North this noon.” “Don’t crow, uncle, till we’re through the Doldrums,” he replied. I had heard a little about this bugbear, but had a rather vague idea as to what sort of a place it was. I was soon to know, for upon going on deck next morning, I found a dead calm. There was not even enough wind to steer by. The atmosphere was hot and muggy, while great masses of wet-looking clouds were piled up all along the horizon. The sails flapped against the masts and rigging with loud reports each time the brig rolled, and when I saluted Seth Hawkins, he said: “Well, Mr. Spencer, how do you like the Doldrums?” During the forenoon a violent rain squall struck us from due South, and we tore along at a nine-knot rate, while such torrents of rain I never saw before. Barrels were put in position to catch the water, but before noon the rain ceased suddenly and the wind with it. Thus it was all that day, all the next day, and for a whole week,—nothing but calms, rain-squalls, and variable winds (usually from the wrong direction), until I was nearly beside myself. Some days we made less than thirty miles in the twenty-four hours, and it was no unusual occurrence to tack ship three, and even four times a day, which put Ralph and the mate in a horrible humor. But there is an end to all things, and on the twenty-ninth day out we crossed the line with a fair wind, and when Ralph figured out our position the next noon, he announced that we should probably be in Pernambuco inside of three days. After much persuasion, I induced him to promise to stop at Fernando de Noronha on the way back long enough for me to go ashore, for the wind we now had would carry us a long way inside the island, and we should not even sight it. Three days later the first half of our journey was completed, and we were safely in port after a good passage of thirty-four days.