To return to the ship and her voyage, I should observe that, after the south-east Trades failed us—succeeded for a short spell by light variable winds, as we kept well away from the coast, and so perhaps missed the land breeze that we might have had—we picked up the south-west monsoon, which carried us past Rio Janeiro.
The term monsoon, or “monsun,” I may explain, is derived from an Arabic word, mausim, meaning “a set time, or season of the year;” and is generally applied to a system of regular wind currents, like the Trades, blowing in different hemispheres beyond the range of those old customers with which ordinary voyagers are familiar.
From Rio we ran down in five days to the Plate River, having fine weather and making pretty good sailing all the time, as indeed we had done since crossing the Line; but, arrived off Monte Video, we soon had warning that our quiet days of progress through the water on one tack, without shifting a brace or starting a sheet, were numbered with the fortunate things of the past.
One morning, just when we were in latitude 34 degrees 55 minutes south, and 55 degrees 10 minutes West, or nearly a hundred miles off the wide estuary of the Rio de la Plata, I noticed a peculiar phenomenon.
The wind was blowing from the northward of west, while the atmosphere was bright and clear, so that the horizon was extended to almost double its ordinary distance; but, although no land was to be seen anywhere in sight, myriads of little winged insects began all at once to hover over us, just as if we were close in shore under the lee of some tropical forest, while our hands, clothes, faces, and the ship’s rigging as well, began to be covered with long, white, hair-like webs, similar to those woven by spiders in a garden shrubbery! I couldn’t make it out at all, feeling inclined to view the matter as one of those extraordinary freaks of Nature, which even science is unable to throw any light on—phenomena that are every now and then exhibited to us, as if only to show our ignorance of the workings of the invisible Power around us guiding the movements and physical cosmogony of our sphere; but Jorrocks, who was a thorough seaman, believing in portents, and thinking that everything unusual at sea was sent for a purpose, and “meant something,” advised my calling the skipper.
“I ’specs, Mister Leigh,” said he, “as how there’s a squall brewing, or summat, for they’re pretty plentiful down here when the wind bears round to the west.”
“All right, Jorrocks; I’ll give him a hail,” I replied; and leaving the boatswain in charge of the deck, it being my watch, I went down to wake up the skipper, he having only turned in just before I came on duty.
“How’s the glass?” asked Captain Billings, as soon as I had roused him and told him what I had observed.
“I didn’t think of looking at it, sir,” I replied.
“Then do so at once,” he said; “a sailor should never fail to consult his barometer, even when the weather is apparently fine, for it gives warning of any change hours, perhaps, before it may occur. It is an unswerving guide—more so than the wind and sky in some latitudes.”