"Well, I hardly know, Tom," answered Captain Miles reflectively. "Although it looked terrific enough at one time, I am not inclined to believe now that it would have been attended with any very serious calamity to our ship, had even the whole quantity of water it contained fallen on our decks. If you recollect, I ordered beforehand the hatches to be battened down and the scuppers in the waist cleared. Besides, the cylinder or spiral column of vapour, you observed, was very like a glass tube in the centre of the water-spout, and this coming in contact with our masts and rigging it would have been at once broken, when the surrounding air rushing into the vacuum to restore the atmospheric equilibrium, the torrent of water would have been forced sideways instead of descending perpendicularly, coming down merely as a heavy tropical shower, similar to those you have been well acquainted with in Grenada. I have heard of some vessels being damaged by water-spouts, but I have never come across anyone who happened to be on board one of them at the time, so I rather fancy the tale was one of those generally `told to the marines.'" So, laughing it off, the captain finished his little scientific lecture at this point, while I went below to my bunk, wishing to get undressed before Harry the steward came to douse the light in the cabin, which he always did sharp to time. If the water-spout did us no actual damage it certainly served as a very bad omen. It took away the favourable breezes, which, before its advent on the scene, had sped the _Josephine_ so gaily on her way home to England; and the weather for some days afterwards was not nearly so pleasant, tedious calms and contrary winds preventing our making the rapid passage Captain Miles anticipated from our good running at the beginning of the voyage. We were now in the region between the regular trade-winds and what are termed "the anti-trades or passage winds," above the tropic of Cancer. This is a particular portion of the ocean between the parallels known to sailors as the "Horse Latitudes," where there is generally a lull met with in the currents of air that elsewhere reign rampant over the sea; and, once arrived within the precincts of this blissful zone, the ship tossed about there for a week at a stretch, hardly making a mile towards her wished-for goal--only rocking restlessly on the bosom of the deep. There is nothing so irksome as calm weather at sea, to those at all events whose duty lies upon the waters and who do not go on shipboard for mere pleasure.