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Updated: May 7, 2025
When we had worried along our easting to 126 degrees west longitude, we left the variables and headed south through the doldrums, where was much calm weather and where, taking advantage of every fan of air, we were often glad to make a score of miles in as many hours. And yet, on such a day, we might pass through a dozen squalls and be surrounded by dozens more.
"Now you know I am not well, don't you, Firio?" he would ask, waggishly, the very thought seeming to take him out of the doldrums. "I could never live out of this climate. Why, even now I have a cough, kuh-er!" Firio had turned a stove cook. He accepted the humiliation in a spirit of loyalty.
Then for another two weeks it wandered on from one small town to another, up and down New York State and through the doldrums of Connecticut, tacking to and fro like a storm-battered ship, till finally the astute and discerning citizens of Hartford welcomed it with such a reception that hardened principals stared at each other in a wild surmise, wondering if these things could really be: and a weary chorus forgot its weariness and gave encore after encore with a snap and vim which even Mr Johnson Miller was obliged to own approximated to something like it.
The variables constitute the belt of ocean lying between the trades and the doldrums, and are conjectured to be the draughts of heated air which rise in the doldrums, flow high in the air counter to the trades, and gradually sink down till they fan the surface of the ocean where they are found.
Reaction was strong, and they had both fallen into aimless doldrums of spirit. Suddenly Bobby sat up straight at attention. The Orde house was provided with old-fashioned hot-air registers. When the registers happened all to be open, they constituted most excellent speaking-tubes. Thus, without intention of deliberate eavesdropping, Bobby and his friend became aware of the following conversation.
That weary bit of work over, along come the south-east trades, making you brace "sharp up," and sometimes driving you uncomfortably near the Brazilian coast. Presently more "doldrums," with a good deal more wind in them than in the "wariables" of the line latitude.
An hour passed away. "Hang them!" said the captain. "This is as dull as the doldrums. Gray, whistle for a wind." And just at that moment came the first news of the attack. "If you please, sir," said Joyce, "if I see anyone, am I to fire?" "I told you so!" cried the captain. "Thank you, sir," returned Joyce, with the same quiet civility.
Look here, I can't bear to see a ship in distress, or a comrade in the doldrums; so I tell you what, young cockbird, raise your crest and don't look so peaky, for I'm going to help you if it's in my power, as most likely it is that is, saving as how it ain't a loss by death, which takes us all, and which the good Lord above can only soothe, bringing comfort to you; and even then, why, a friendly word, and a grip o' some un's hand, sometimes softens down the roughest plank we've got to tread.
For ten days light baffling winds impeded his progress; but at the end of that time the winds fell away altogether, and the voyagers found themselves in that flat equatorial calm known to mariners as the Doldrums.
And now and again, from out of the darkness on either hand, just under the surface, larger phosphorescent organisms flashed up like electric lights, marking collisions with the careless bonitas skurrying ahead to the good hunting just beyond our bowsprit. We made our easting, worked down through the doldrums, and caught a fresh breeze out of south-by-west.
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