ship, while the foam flew high up upon the mast. The waves crossed each other in every direction, huge conical masses rising suddenly to a height of 25 or 30 feet, as far as one might guess, and then as suddenly subsiding. It was the genuine pyramidal sea of the true cyclone, of which vessels caught in these furious circular storms are even more apprehensive than the fury and strength of the hurricane.
The wind, which now began to draw to the westward, indicated that thus far we had shaped a proper course, and that the course of the cyclone lay towards the N.W. Under these circumstances it was deemed most prudent to make the Marianne Islands, and to avail ourselves even of the hurricane in order to perform a rapid voyage. We accordingly now laid our course to steer S.E. by S., through the centre of the channel south of the Loo-Choo Islands. Considering the width, 120 nautical miles, of this channel, there was reason to hope that, despite the errors in reckoning which were to be expected amid so many manœuvres, and considering the impossibility of getting astronomical observations, and the influence of the sort of currents which those hurricanes usually set in motion for a short period, we might make our way through it in safety.
The wind remained steadily in the N.W., and at first was on our port quarter. Towards noon, however, it came round to N.W. by W., so that we were now running dead before it. We now set double-reefed foresail so as to make quicker progress. Towards 6 P.M. the hurricane woke up to its full
strength; squall followed squall, the universal covering of cloud in which the heavens seemed wrapped looked as though it reached to the very waters, and the air was quite filled with spray, till when standing at the ship's stern it was barely possible to distinguish the forecastle. The storm, sweeping along above the seething water, had a singular piercing, almost metallic, note, quite unlike the singing and whistling made among the sails and cordage. Staggering along under close-reefed fore and main sail, and double-reefed top-sail, the frigate pressed on through the thick night, going 14 miles an hour, through the strait between Loo-Choo and Meiaco-sima, out of the China Sea into the Pacific Ocean, whither she was being hurried along with such impetuous, irresistible violence by the wind, that not even the most experienced seaman could make head against it, but had, when passing from one part of the ship to the other, to warp himself along by means of a rope made fast fore and aft.[190] At 4 P.M. the barometer stood at its lowest (29°.302, the temperature at the same period being 66°.02 Fahr.), where it remained without sensible alteration for several hours. At last, towards 9 P.M., it began slowly to rise, the surest indication, and therefore most welcome one, that we were increasing our distance from the
central point of the storm. About 11 P.M. the clouds suddenly lifted on S.S.E., the horizon began to widen; there was no longer a doubt that the worst was over.
At dawn on the 20th the masts and cordage showed a thick incrustation of salt, thus giving unmistakable evidence of the great height to which the spray had been driven. The wind was now W.S.W., and the barometer had risen to 29°.5, so that we had now merely an ordinary gale to deal with, and might look upon the cyclone as expended. Science had indicated the method of evading the centre of the circular storm, and even of making the very hurricane subservient to our ends in driving us along our destined course!
At 8 A.M. the sun began to be visible by fits and starts, long enough, however, to permit us to make an occasional observation. According to this we were only one mile out of our position by dead-reckoning. During the 24 hours, inclusive of the period during which we lay to, we had run 218 miles in a general direction of S.E. by E. During the afternoon the sky cleared. The sea was still high, but the atmosphere gradually became clearer and more transparent, till by sundown even the large banks of clouds on the N.E. which continued to mark the centre of the cyclone had entirely disappeared. The Novara during this tremendous storm had proved herself a thorough sea-boat, nor was there any particular damage noticeable on the occasion of the careful inspection to which her sails, masts, and rigging were subjected, immediately that the weather became more favourable.
Her masts and sails, which in such a warfare of the elements she might so readily have had carried away, were all found to be uninjured, and only a few plates of her copper sheeting had been loosened by the fury of the waves, while those still clinging to the ship had been rolled up like so much paper, by the tremendous pitching of the good ship. The quarter gallery too, which when the frigate was running before the wind was exposed to considerable danger, had sustained but little damage. Such unfortunately was not the case with a small menagerie of rare birds and monkeys, which had been placed in cages carefully covered with linen in this, ordinarily the most sheltered, part of the vessel. The covering had been torn away by the hurricane, and the wind had so tossed the poor things about, that all their feathers were knocked off, and they presented a most pitiable appearance. The quadrupeds too, whose cries and lowings during the storm had already testified to their misery, were found to have suffered severely. Two oxen and several sheep died on the 19th. All the surviving animals lost flesh terribly during 48 hours, while those that had been the wildest and most untameable were now quite tame and docile.
An analysis of the phenomena observed during the continuation of the cyclone, shows that on the 18th it formed its vortex, being then about opposite the rather lofty and tolerable-sized island of Dkinawasmia of the Loo-Choo group, which must have occasioned an alteration in the direction of the wind. Owing in part to the influence of the N.E.
trade, which enters the northern part of the China Sea, and at this season is gradually veering round till it completely displaces the S.W. monsoon, as also during the S.W. monsoon itself, which blows from Formosa on the south, there appears to exist to the northward of the latter-named island, favoured probably by its natural configuration and physical features, a well-defined space within which the barometer is always depressed, and in which the atmosphere in immediate contact with these N.E. and S.W. winds is compelled to assume a sort of whirling motion, like that of the hands of a clock, thus forming the germ as it were of a cyclone.