In these places it seldom rained. Drinking water, as long as it lasted, became putrid, but the crew preserved it as their most precious treasure, drinking a little when they could go no longer without it—holding their noses. The food became so bad that every man who had the courage to eat it wondered if it wouldn’t be better to starve. This happened often in the North Atlantic in the days when sailing vessels were carrying horses to the West Indies. If they were becalmed and fresh water ran short, the crews had to throw some or all of the horses overboard. In time this region became known as the “horse latitudes.” Because it lay north and northeast of the hurricane belt, a long spell of rainless weather for a sailing ship here could be succeeded suddenly and overwhelmingly by the torrential rains of a tropical storm. At long intervals, a slight breeze came along, barely enough to extend a small flag, but it gave the ship a little motion and brought hope to the men who were worn out with tugging at the oars. In this circumstance, it might happen that a long, low groundswell would appear. Coming from a great distance, it would raise and then lower the vessel a little in passing. Others would surely follow—low undulations at intervals of four or five to the minute—bringing a warning of a storm beyond the horizon. Here was one of the ironic twists of a sailor’s existence. Even while he prayed for water, the atmosphere was about to give it to him in tremendous quantities, both from above and below. At this juncture the master was in a quandary. For the safety of ship and crew, it was vital that he know exactly what to do at the very instant when the first gusty breezes of the coming storm filled the sails. From the law of storms, the mariner eventually learned—and it was suicide to forget it at a time like this—that if he could look forward from the center of the hurricane, along the line of progress, the most terrible winds and waves would be on his right. Here the raging demons of the tropical blast outdo themselves. The whirling velocity is added to the forward motion, for both in these few harrowing hours have the same direction. All the power of the atmosphere is delivered in this space, where unbelievable gales try to blast their way into the partial vacuum at the center. But the atmosphere is held back from the center by a still greater power, the rotation of the earth on its axis. No shipmaster should ever be caught between these awful forces with the huge bulk of the storm drawing toward him. Here we find horrors that were never disclosed to the early storm hunters. It is doubtful if any sailing ship or any man aboard survived in this sector of a really great hurricane. But even more dangerous are the deceitful motions of the sea surface, which can trap the mariner and drag his vessel toward the dangerous sector, even while he thinks he is fighting his way out of it.