If we had been able to take the opinion of our dogs on their existence in the tropics, they would probably have answered as one dog:  “Thanks, let us get back to rather cooler surroundings.”  Their coats were not exactly calculated for a temperature of 90deg. in the shade, and the worst of it was that they could not change them.  It is, by the way, a misunderstanding to suppose that these animals absolutely must have hard frost to be comfortable; on the contrary, they prefer to be nice and warm.  Here in the tropics of course they had rather too much of a good thing, but they did not suffer from the heat.  By stretching awnings over the whole ship we contrived that they should all be constantly in the shade, and so long as they were not directly exposed to the sun’s rays, there was no fear of anything going wrong.  How well they came through it appears best from the fact that not one of them was on the sick-list on account of the heat.  During the whole voyage only two deaths occurred from sickness —­ one was the case of a bitch that died after giving birth to eight pups —­ which might just as easily have caused her death under other conditions.  What was the cause of death in the other case we were unable to find out; at any rate, it was not an infectious disease.

One of our greatest fears was the possibility of an epidemic among the dogs, but thanks to the care with which they had been picked, there was never a sign of anything of the sort.

In the neighbourhood of the Equator, between the north-east and the south-east trades, lies what is called the “belt of calms.”  The position and extent of this belt vary somewhat with the season.  If you are extremely lucky, it may happen that one trade-wind will practically take you over into the other; but, as a rule, this region will cause quite a serious delay to sailing-ships; either there are frequent calms, or shifting and unsteady winds.  We arrived there at an unfavourable time of the year and lost the north-east trade as early as ten degrees north of the line.  If we had had the calms we looked for, we could have got across with the help of the engine in a reasonably short time, but we saw very little sign of calms.  As a rule, there was an obstinate south wind blowing, and it would not have taken very much of it to make the last few degrees of north latitude stiffer than we cared for.

The delay was annoying enough, but we had another disappointment of a more serious kind, for, curiously enough, we never had a proper shower of rain.  Generally in these latitudes one encounters extremely heavy downpours, which make it possible to collect water by the barrelful in a very short space of time.  We had hoped in this way to increase our store of fresh water, which was not so large but that extreme economy had to be practised if we were to avoid running short.  However, this hope failed us, practically speaking.  We managed to catch a little water, but it was altogether insufficient, and the husbanding