A clean fo'c'sle, dry, well aired bedding, and smiling skies, ushered us into the region of the equatorial rains. The flying fish began to zip through the air again with increasing frequency and the mates as usual gathered them up, but, strangest of strange things, the cook was told to send half of the catch forward. The daily thunderstorms came with their accustomed regularity. At about eight bells in the afternoon watch it would cloud up suddenly, any sails spread out on deck, in the course of repair, would be hastily dragged to the sail locker or under the fo'c'sle head, and presto!—a rumble of thunder would follow the first faint flashes of lightning. Then several bright jagged discharges would come in quick succession, a clap of Jove's artillery, and a douse of rain, followed by the golden rays of the sun streaming through such rainbows as are seldom seen anywhere but in those latitudes.
During a tropic storm at night, just after leaving the trades, we were roused out at midnight and ordered aloft to take in the t'gans'ls. The yards and rigging were soaked with rain, and, as we got to the tops, St. Elmo's fires started to flicker on the yard arms with a pale blue light. The night was black, and oppressive with the hot humid wind, we were wet and clammy, and the sleep was in our eyes when——
"And sudden breaking on their raptured sight,
Appeared the splendor of St. Elmo's light."
Jimmy Marshall, fear clutching at his heart, refused to mount the futtock shrouds; springing to the forward leg of the main topmast backstays, he slid to the deck while the rest of us went aloft. The stoutest of us, however, were touched with superstitious feelings. The "corposants," as the men called them, started us on a series of ghost stories in the night watches on deck. A few days later we were becalmed in a dense fog, such as sometimes is encountered in the warm, damp region bordering the line. Joe went aft to relieve the wheel just after listening to a gruesome tale. A giant man out in the fog over the quarter reached for Joe when abreast of the open door of the wheel house. Joe nearly fainted with fright, at the sight of his own shadow thrown on the fog wall by the naked binnacle light that the helmsman had taken from the cowl to trim.
CHAPTER XII
[MAKING PORT]
One hundred and seven days out from Sandy Hook, we crossed the line for the second time in longitude 122° west from Greenwich. The grooming for port then started in grim earnest. Holystones were brought out and the time-honored couplet of the sea,
Six days shalt thou labor and do all that thou art able,
And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.