Brooding down the Spanish main
“Shall I see my forces, zounds!
Measured in square inches, pounds?
With detectives at my back
When I double on my track!
All my secret paths made clear!
Published to a hemisphere!
Shall I? Blow me, if I do!”
—Bret Harte
After Joe Duckworth flew into the center of the hurricane near Galveston on July 27, 1943, there was much excitement about the remarkable fact that he had experienced no very dangerous weather or damage to his plane on the trip. But the experts realized that hunting hurricanes as a regular business would be different. Men who had flown the weather in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the tropics and subtropics, and those who had just thought about it, had visions of undulating seas stirred by soft tropical breezes, white clouds piled in neat balls on the horizon, blue water, blue sky, and lush palm-covered coasts and islands. And yet they knew that nowhere is the sly trickery of wind and storm more dangerous. Suddenly and with no apparent reason, the soft breezes turn into quick little gusts and wrap themselves around a center, with gray clouds spreading and rain coming in brief squalls. The whirl spreads, gathering other winds into its orbit, and hard rain begins. Soon there are violent gales and the power of the storm is apparent in the roaring of the wind and sea.