So, let the bottle pass! Its career has not been more deadly, perchance, than was his during the time that the earth was scourged with his presence!
On reaching the hot region of the equator, our little craft was again sadly knocked about by conflicting currents, and performed one or two deep-sea voyages in company with currents which dived a good deal in consequence of their superior density and inferior heat. At one time it seemed as if it would be caught by the drift which flows down the east coast of South America, and thus get back into the seas from which it set out.
But this was not to be. Owing to some cause which is utterly beyond the ken of mortals, the bottle at last got fairly into the great equatorial current which flows westward from the Gulf of Guinea. It reached the north-west corner of South America, and progressing now at a more rapid and steady rate, progressed along the northern shore of that continent—passed the mouth of the mighty Amazon and the Orinoco, and, pushing its way among the West India Islands, crossed the Carribean Sea, sighted the Isthmus of Darien, coasted the Bay of Honduras, and swept round the Gulf of Mexico.
Here the great current is diverted from its westward course, and, passing through the Gulf of Florida, rushes across the Atlantic in a north-easterly direction, under the well-known name of the Gulf Stream. Men of old fancied that this great current had its origin in the Gulf of Mexico; hence its name; but we now know that, like many another stream, it has many heads or sources, the streams flowing from which converge in the Gulf of Mexico, and receive new and united direction there.
With the Gulf Stream the bottle pursued its voyage until it was finally cast ashore on the west of Ireland. Many a waif of the sea has been cast there before it by the same cause, and doubtless many another shall be cast there in time to come.
An Irishman with a jovial countenance chanced to be walking on the beach at the moment when, after a voyage of two years, our bottle touched the strand.
He picked it up and eyed it curiously.
“Musha! but it’s potheen.”
A more careful inspection caused him to shake his head.
“Ah, then, it’s impty.”