On the following day heavy rain-clouds rose in the south, obscuring the sun; this was ominous of doldrums.

On the 16th the _Spray_ entered this gloomy region, to battle with squalls and to be harassed by fitful calms; for this is the state of the elements between the northeast and the southeast trades, where each wind, struggling in turn for mastery, expends its force whirling about in all directions.

Making this still more trying to one's nerve and patience, the sea was tossed into confused cross-lumps and fretted by eddying currents.

As if something more were needed to complete a sailor's discomfort in this state, the rain poured down in torrents day and night.

The _Spray_ struggled and tossed for ten days, making only three hundred miles on her course in all that time.