The barometer has remained perfectly stationary at 29.57 during this blow for seven hours (from morning to 7 P.M.), without varying a single hair’s breadth, during all of which time the gale was raging with unmitigated violence from about S.W. by W. to S.W.  During this period, we were travelling about on an average speed of eleven knots; and of course this must have been the rate of speed of the vortex—­distant from us probably 150 to 200 miles.  At 7 P.M. the mercury began to rise slowly, and at 8 was at 27.60, the weather looking less angry, and the squalls not so frequent or violent.  Verily, our good ship, as she is darted ahead on the top of one of those huge, long Indian Ocean waves that pursue her, seems like a mere cock-boat.

It is remarkable that this is the anniversary of the cyclone we took off the banks of Newfoundland.

October 18th—­Observing has been particularly vexatious during the past week.  What with the heavy seas constantly rising between the observer and the horizon, preventing him from producing a contact at the very instant, it may be, that he is ready for it, the passage of a flying cloud under the sun when his horizon is all right, and the heavy rolling of the ship requiring him to pay the utmost care to the preservation of his balance, and sometimes even to “lose his sight”—­from the necessity of withdrawing one hand suddenly from his instrument to grasp the rail or the rigging to prevent himself from falling—­what with all these things, the patience of even as patient a man as myself is sorely tried.  Perhaps this stormy tumbling about at sea is the reason why seamen are so calm and quiet on shore.  We come to hate all sorts of commotion, whether physical or moral.

At last the region of endless gales was passed, and escaping entirely the southern belt of calms, the Alabama dashed along in the S.E. trade.  On the 26th October, as she was nearing the Line, news reached her from an English barque, that the United States sloop Wyoming was on guard in the Sunda Straits, accompanied by a three-masted schooner.  This sloop being about the Alabama’s own size, hopes of a fight were again rife among both officers and men; and great was their impatience when the trade at length parted from them, and light, variable winds again began to baffle the eager ship.

Drawing slowly nearer to the Straits, news still came from passing ships of the enemy’s presence there, reports going at length so far as to state, that she had been specially dispatched thither by the United States consul at Batavia, in search of the Alabama herself.

At last, on the 6th November, came another prize, the first since leaving the Cape of Good Hope, nearly six weeks before.  She proved to be the barque Amanda, from Manilla to Queenstown for orders, the following being the particulars of her case:—­

CASE OF THE BARQUE AMANDA.

Ship under U.S. colours and register.  Cargo, sugar and hemp.  Charter-party to proceed to Europe or the United States.  On the face of each of the three bills of lading appears the following certificate for the British Vice-consul at Manilla:—­