“Why didn’t we take in something then, and get ready for it?” inquired Frank.
“Why, we want to run away from it, don’t we? How could we do it with everything furled? You may safely trust the captain. There’s a heap of knowledge under those gray hairs of his.”
“I know that,” returned Frank, quickly. “I only asked for information.”
“You see,” continued the officer, “hurricanes are not like ordinary gales. The wind moves in a circle, and at the same time the body of the storm has a motion in a straight line. The pressure of the atmosphere is less the nearer you get to the outside of the storm, and greater as you approach the centre; while if you should get into the very centre of it, you wouldn’t feel any wind at all.”
“Has that been proved, or is it merely supposition?” asked Frank.
“It has been proved in a hundred cases, and once in my own experience. It happened two years ago, and off the Mauritius. It began with a rather stiff breeze, which in two hours increased to a gale, and in two more to the worst hurricane I ever saw in my life. It blew squarely from the northeast, and when it got so hard that it seemed as if wood and iron couldn’t stand it an instant longer, there came a calm quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, and there wasn’t a breath of air stirring. This lasted fifteen minutes, and then without any warning the wind began again with the most terrible screech I ever heard, and blew from the southwest as hard as ever. Now, we don’t propose to get in there with this little craft. As soon as we can tell which way it is coming from we’ll run off in another direction and get out of its track. There’s the first puff of it now,” said the officer, as a strong gust of wind filled the sails, and the schooner began to careen under the pressure. “Keep her steady, there.”
Mr. Baldwin started toward the cabin, but Uncle Dick was on the alert, and came up the ladder in two jumps. He looked at the compass, made sure of the direction of the wind, then issued some hasty orders, and in five minutes more the Stranger was bounding away on another tack, and in a direction lying almost at right angles with the one she had been following. This was the time for Frank to see if his ideas were correct. He looked at the compass and found that the wind was coming from the northeast, coming pretty strong, too, which proved that they must be some distance inside of the outer circle of the storm. It proved, too, that the centre of the storm lay to the northwest of them, and as it was moving toward the southeast, of course it was coming directly toward them. The shortest way out of its path lay in a southwesterly direction, and that was the way the schooner was heading, as he saw by another glance at the compass. It took him some time to think these points all out, but Uncle Dick, aided by the skill acquired by long experience, had decided them without a moment’s delay.
“What was the old course, quartermaster?” asked Frank.
“Nor’west, one-half west, sir,” was the answer.
“We were holding as straight for it as we could go,” said Frank, drawing a long breath. “In a little while we’d have been in the very midst of it.”