our good ship motionless, dead in a dead blue sea it was

'Idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.'

"The sails were hanging loosely in the shrouds: every one set, from
sky-scraper to stud-sail, in hopes to catch a breath of wind. My
fellow-passengers and the crew, almost melted, were lying about, as weak
as parboiled eels: it was high-noon, all things silent and subdued by
that intolerable blaze; for the vertical sun, over our multiplied
awnings and umbrellas, burnt us up, fierce as a furnace.

"I was leaning over the gangway, looking wistfully at the cool, clear,
deep sea, wherefrom the sailors were trying to persuade a shark to come
on board us, when, all at once, in the south-east quarter, I noticed a
little round black cloud, thrown up from the horizon like a
cricket-ball. As any thing is attractive in such sameness as perpetual
sea and sky, my discovery was soon made known, and among the first to
our captain.

"Calling for his Dolland, and bidding his second lieutenant run quick to
the cabin and look at the barometer, he viewed the little cloud in
evident anxiety, and shook his head with a solemn air: more than one
light-hearted woman thinking he was quizzing them.

"Up came Lieutenant Joyce, looking as if he had seen a ghost in the
cabin.

"'The mercury, sir, is falling just as rapidly as it would rise if you
plunged it into boiling water: an inch a minute or so!"