Kawa's deck singing "Oralee", to which we had taught Triplett the bass.

"Like a blackbird in the spring,
Chanting Ora-lee...."

"Very un-sanitary," said Whinney, "a blackbird ... in the spring ...
very un-sanitary."

We laughed feebly.

Suddenly, as they do in the tropics, an extraordinary thing happened.
A simoon, a monsoon and a typhoon met, head on, at the exact corner
of the equator and the 180th meridian. We hadn't noticed one of
them,--they had given us no warning or signal of any kind. Before we
knew it they were upon us!

I have been in any one of the three separately many a time. In '95 off
the Blue Canary Islands I was caught in an octoroon, one of those
eight-sided storms, that spun our ship around like a top, and killed
all the canaries for miles about--the sea was strewn with their bodies.
But this!

"Below," bellowed Captain Triplett, and we made a dive for the hatch.
William Henry Thomas was the last in, having been in the bow setting
off a pinwheel, when the blow hit us. We dragged him in. My last memory
is of Triplett driving a nail back of the hatch-cover to keep it from
sliding.

How long we were whirled in that devil's grip of the elements I cannot
say. It may have been a day--it may have been a week. We were all