Some of the lieutenants were turned out of their state-rooms, for their accommodation, but being carpet knights, as well as knights of the lance, they submitted to the discomfort with becoming grace.

My ménage began now to assume quite a domestic air. I had previously captured another interesting prisoner, who was still on board-not having been released on parole. This prisoner was a charming little canary-bird, which had been. brought on board from a whaler, in its neat gilded cage. Bartelli had the wonderful art, too, of supplying me with flowers -brought from the shore when this was practicable, and when not practicable, raised in his own tiny pots. When I would turn over in my cot, in the morning, for another nap, in that dim consciousness which precedes awakening, I would listen, in dreamy mood, to the sweet notes of the canary, the pattering of the tiny feet of the children and their gleeful voices over my head; inhaling, the while, the scent of the geranium, or the jessamine, and forget all about war's alarms. "Home, Sweet Home," with all its charms, would cluster around my imagination, and as my slumber deepened, putting reason to rest, and giving free wing to fancy, I would be clasping again the long-absent dear ones to my heart. Bartelli's shake of my cot, and his announcement that it was "seven bells"-halfpast seven, which was my hour for rising-would often be a rude dispeller of such fancies, whilst the Fairchilds were on board.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE CALM-BELTS, AND THE TRADE-WINDS - THE ARRIVAL OF THE ALABAMA AT THE ISLAND OF MARTINIQUE-THE CURIOSITY OF THE ISLANDERS ΤΟ SEE THE SHIP-A QUASI MUTINY AMONG THE CREW, AND HOW IT WAS QUELLED.

E captured the Wales, as described in the last chapter, on the 8th of November. On the 10th of the same

WE

month, we observed in latitude 25°. We were approaching the calm-belt of Cancer. There are three of these calm-belts on the surface of the earth, and the phenomena which they present to the eye of the seaman are very beautiful. A ship coming out of New York, for instance, and bound south, will first encounter the calm-belt which the Alabama is now approaching-that of Cancer. She will lose the wind which has brought her to the "belt," and meet with light airs, and calms, accompanied, frequently, by showers of rain. She will probably be several days in passing through this region of the "doldrums," as the sailors expressively call it, continually bracing her yards, to catch the "cats-paws" that come, now from one, and now from another point of the compass; and making no more than twenty, or thirty miles per day. As she draws near the southern edge of the belt, she will receive the first light breathings of the north-east trade-wind. These will increase, as she proceeds farther and farther south, and she will, ere long, find herself with bellying canvas, in a settled "trade." She will now run with this wind, blowing with wonderful steadiness and regularity, until she begins to near the equator. The wind will now die away again, and the ship will enter the second of these belts that of equatorial calms. Wending her way slowly and toilsomely through these, as she did through those

of Cancer, she will emerge next into the south-east trade-wind, which she will probably find somewhat stronger than the northeast trade. This wind will hurry her forward to the tropic of Capricorn, in the vicinity of which she will find her third and last calm-belt.

These three calm-belts enclose, the reader will have observed, two systems of trade-winds. To understand something of these winds, and the calms which enclose them, a brief reference to the atmospheric machine in which we “live, and breathe, and have our being" will be necessary. A philosopher of the East has thus glowingly described some of the beauties of this machine: "It is," says he, "a spherical shell, which surrounds our planet, to a depth which is unknown to us, by reason of its grow. ing tenuity, as it is released from the pressure of its own superincumbent mass. Its surface cannot be nearer to us than fifty, and can scarcely be more remote than five hundred miles. It surrounds us on all sides, yet we see it not; it presses on us with a load of fifteen pounds on every square inch of surface of our bodies, or from seventy to one hundred tons on us, in all, and yet we do not so much as feel its weight. Softer than the softest down-more impalpable than the finest gossamer - it leaves the cobweb undisturbed, and scarcely stirs the lightest flower that feeds on the dew it supplies; yet it bears the fleets of nations on its wings around the world, and crushes the most refractory substances with its weight. When in motion, its force is sufficient to level the most stately forests, and stable buildings with the earth to raise the waters of the ocean into ridges like mountains, and dash the strongest ship to pieces like toys.

"It warms and cools, by turns, the earth, and the living creatures that inhabit it. It draws up vapors from the sea and land, retains them dissolved in itself, or suspended in cisterns of clouds, and throws them down again, as rain or dew when they are required. It bends the rays of the sun from their path, to give us the twilight of evening, and of dawn; it disperses, and refracts their various tints, to beautify the approach and the retreat of the orb of day. But for the atmosphere, sunshine would burst on us, and fail us at once, and at once remove us from midnight darkness to the blaze of noon. We should

have no twilight to soften, and beautify the landscape; no clouds to shade us from the scorching heat, but the bald earth, as it revolved on its axis, would turn its tanned and weakened front to the full and unmitigated rays of the lord of day.

"It affords the gas which vivifies, and warms our frames, and receives into itself that which has been polluted by use, and thrown off as noxious. It feeds the flame of life, exactly as it does that of the fire. It is in both cases consumed, and affords the food of consumption,- in both cases it becomes combined with charcoal, which requires it for combustion, and is removed by it, when this is over."

The first law of nature may be said to be vis inertiæ, and the atmosphere thus beautifully described, following this law, would be motionless, if there were not causes, outside of itself, to put it in motion. The atmosphere in motion is wind, with which the sailor has so much to do, and it behooves him to understand, not only the causes which produce it, but the laws which control it. "Whence cometh the wind, and whither goeth it?" It comes from heat, and as the sun is the father of heat, he is the father of the winds. Let us suppose the earth, and atmosphere both to be created, but not yet the sun. The atmosphere, being of equal temperature throughout the earth, would be in equilibrium. It could not move in any direction, and there would not be the slightest breeze to fan the brow. Now let us suppose the sun to be called into existence, and to begin to dart forth his rays. If he heated the earth, and the atmosphere in all parts alike, whilst there would be a swelling of the atmosphere into greater bulk, there would still be no motion which we could call wind. But the earth being placed in an elliptical orbit, and made to revolve around the sun, with its axis inclined to the plane in which it revolves, now approaching, and now receding from the sun, and now having the sun in one hemisphere, and now in another, the atmosphere is not only heated differently, in different parts of the earth, but at different seasons of the year; and thus the winds are engendered.

Let us imagine this heating process to be going on for the first time. How we should be astonished? The atmosphere having hitherto had no motion, in our experience, we should

have conceived it as immovable as the hills, and would be quite as much astonished to see it putting itself in motion, as to see the hills running away from us. But in what direction is the atmosphere now moving? Evidently from the north, and south poles toward the equator, because we know that the intertropical portions of the earth are more heated, than the extratropical portions.

Thus far, we have not given the earth any diurnal motion around its axis. Let us give it this motion. It is revolving now from west to east, at the rate of fifteen miles in a minute. If the atmosphere had been perfectly still when this motion was given to the earth, as we have supposed it to have been before the creation of the sun, the consequence would be a breeze directly from the east, blowing with different degrees of strength, as it was nearer to, or further from the equator. For it is obviously the same thing whether the atmosphere stands still, and the earth revolves, or whether the earth stands still, and the atmosphere moves. In either case we have a wind.

But the atmosphere was not still, when we gave the diurnal motion to the earth. There was already a breeze blowing, as we have seen, from the north, and south poles toward the equator. We have thus generated two winds-a north wind and an east wind.. But these two winds cannot blow in the same place at the same time; and the result will be a wind compounded of the two. Thus in the northern hemisphere